HUMAN CONDUCT 



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HUMAN CONDUCT 

A TEXTBOOK IN GENERAL PHILOSOPHY AND AP- 
PLIED PSYCHOLOGY FOR STUDENTS IN HIGH 
SCHOOLS, ACADEMIES, JUNIOR COLLEGES, 
AND FOR THE GENERAL READER 



BY 
CHARLES CLINTON PETERS 

(A.M., Harvard; Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION 

OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 



Weto gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1918 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1918, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and elcctrotyped. Published September, 1918. 



OCT 10 1918 



Wortoooti ^rrss 

J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©GI.A506098 



TO 

A. DUNCAN YOCUM 

TO WHOM I AM INDEBTED FOR THE PEDAGOG- 
ICAL VIEWPOINT WHICH GUIDED THE CON- 
STRUCTION OF THIS BOOK, AND WHO, AT THE 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, HAS GIVEN 
TO SO MANY MEN A NEW VISION OF THE 
MEANING AND POSSIBILITIES OF EDUCATION 

2rj)is Volume is ©ratefuU^ Jietricatelr 



PREFACE 

This book represents a venture in a new field. It under- 
takes to make available for the secondary school and for 
teachers' reading circles, materials for a course in General 
Philosophy corresponding to the courses in general science 
and combined mathematics which have lately won an 
apparently established, and certainly well-deserved, place 
in the curriculum. The book attempts to combine into an 
integrated elementary course materials selected from psy- 
chology, logic, ethics, and the psychology and philosophy of 
religion. The work has been in the making for nearly five 
years, and was taught from mimeographed copy for two years 
to the senior classes in the high school at Royersford, Pennsyl- 
vania. During this period of construction and experience, 
the course underwent many modifications, each of which, 
it is hoped, has resulted in a more perfect adaptation of 
it to its purpose and to the age of the pupils for whom it 
is intended. 

As no course, even a general course, may be a mere jumble 
of unrelated facts, the author has attempted to maintain 
throughout a consistent viewpoint, — that of the bearing of 
the material selected upon the individuaFs effective control 
of his own conduct. Whatever did not bear directly upon 
this was excluded, no matter how attractive in itself. For 
this reason explanatory psychology has been kept subordi- 
nate to the practical and has been brought in only in such way 
as to reenforce the latter. Topics without direct practical 
application for the ordinary student, such as Weber's Law 
or a detailed description of the nervous system, are omitted 
entirely. Likewise aspects which have to do chiefly with 
social relationships rather than individual efficiency are 
omitted. Within the field selected the author was con- 

vii 



viii Preface 

tinually guided, too, by the test of relative usefulness of the 
matter to the ordinary student. 

The second distinguishing feature of the work is the 
effort to emotionalize the instruction. It is not ideas alone, 
but ideas warmed with emotion, that get carried into action. 
Hence the author's chief effort was to build up strong impres- 
sions and emotionalized attitudes rather than merely to give 
speculative knowledge. This was attempted partly through 
the use of such arguments and such relative emphasis as are 
calculated to arouse feeling, and particularly through the 
use of literary quotations embodied in the text wherever it 
seemed that they could contribute toward building up a 
dynamic attitude. For this reason, too, anything that 
might tend to break the force of the impression was avoided. 
Qualifying phrases which strict scientific accuracy would 
sometimes require have been omitted for the sake of clearness 
and emphasis. 

In conducting this course the teacher should lead in a 
reaction upon the text. The typical question should not be 
^^What does the book say?'' but ^^Is the author right?'' 
^^Give examples from your own experience," ^^How does 
this principle apply to such and such practical situation ?" 
etc. A number of such questions, supplementary to the 
text and calling for reaction upon it, is appended to each 
chapter. 

It will, of course, be obvious how intimately a work such 
as this bears upon the vexed problem of moral training in the 
high school. It undertakes to provide the student with 
principles for the control of conduct and, as such, constitutes 
moral instruction in the broadest sense. The author believes 
that moral instruction in the high school must take on a more 
systematic and intellectual form than in the grades, but a less 
philosophical form than in the college, and hopes that this 
book may be of some service in providing a basis for such 
instruction. 

M}^ obligations are so many that it is impossible to acknowl- 
edge more than a few of them specifically. I have drawn 
freely upon the literature in the field and, indeed, claim 



Preface ix 

originality for little except the type of organization and the 
relative emphasis. It is a pleasure to me to acknowledge 
my obligation to Dr. A. M. Melvin, Secretary of the Royers- 
ford School Board, without whose sympathy and support 
this book, at least in its present form, could not have been 
produced. I am also greatly indebted to Professor Ell wood 
P. Cubberley, who, at considerable sacrifice of time, went 
carefully over the whole manuscript. My indebtedness of 
Professor A. Duncan Yocum is indicated in the dedication. 
My thanks are due to The Macmillan Company, D. Appleton 
and Company, and Professors Lightner Witmer, Daniel 
Starch, and E. L. Thorndike for permission to reproduce 
certain cuts. 

The following acknowledgments also are gratefully made : 
to Henry Holt and Company for permission to quote rather 
extensively from James's Psychology ; to Lothrop, Lee & 
Shepard Company for permission to quote, from Whiffs 
from Wild Meadows, Sam Walter Fosses poem. The Calf- 
Path; to Edwin Markham for permission to use a part of 
his famous poem. The Man with the Hoe; and to Orison 
Swett Marden for permission to quote frequently, especially 
in chapters XXIII and XXVI, from Pushing to the Front, 
Success, and others of his books. 

The author^s gratitude is due to the following persons for 
reading parts of the proof and making suggestions for re- 
vision : Mr. H. T. Main, principal of the high school at 
Delaware, Ohio; Professors H. P. Reeves and H. V. Cald- 
well of the Ohio Wesley an University; and Miss Edith M. 
Lehman of the high school at Abbington, Pa. Miss Leh- 
man went carefully over the whole of the proof and sug- 
gested many improvements. 

C. C. P. 

Delaware, Ohio, 
August 29, 1918. 



CONTENTS 



I. How Our World Gets Enriched . . . . 

II. How Misunderstandings Arise . . . . 

III. How Our Senses Deceive Us — Illusions . 

IV. Apperception and Tact • . 

V. Race Apperception — Keeping Open-Minded 

toward Progress 

VI. How We Solve Our Problems — Conscious Use 
OF Hypotheses ....... 

VII. Our Concepts and How We Make Them Clear 

VIII. How We Keep Our Ideas Clear — Careful Use 

OF Words . . 

IX. How We Learn the Cause of Things 

X. The Pitfalls of Reasoning . 

XI. Control of Conduct through Idea 

XII. The Factors in Personality . 

XIII. The Effective Use of the Memory 

XIV. Mental Imagery .... 
XV. Imagination and Its Culture 

XVI. Attention ...... 

XVII. The Making and Breaking of Habits 

XVIII. Character and Will 

XIX. The Strong Self — The Social Lion 

XX. The Strong Self — Selfishness 

XXI. The Strong Self — Independence 

XXII. The Strong Self — the Popular Hero 



1 
15 
34 

48 

62 

78 
89 

108 
119 
130 
145 
156 
162 
190 
206 
229 
250 
272 
293 
303 
316 
334 



xii Contents 

PAGE 

XXIII. The Strong Self — One's Life in His Work . 342 

XXIV. How Work May Be Saved from Drudgery . 352 
XXV. Loyalty 364 

XXVI. Choosing a Vocation 379 

XXVII. In the Valleys — the Psychology of Periods of 

Discouragement 393 

XXVIII. The Strong Man's Religion 409 

List of Books for Collateral Reading .... 427 

Index 429 



HUMAN CONDUCT 



HUMAN CONDUCT 

CHAPTER I 
HOW OUR WORLD GETS ENRICHED 

The richness of our world. — Would you not like to live 
in fairjdand? It is the land where every wish is reaUzed. 
It contains no desert spots. Every nook holds fresh surprises, 
every drop of water and every blade of grass even are full 
of meaning. Turn where you will there is everywhere to be 
found a wealth of interesting objects. It is a world of won- 
der, and compared with it our own world is tame and insipid. 

Now in fact, that enchanted land is not far away. The path 
to it is in one sense very short. Indeed that land lies already 
all about us. For no fairyland of our dreams can equal, 
in the multitude of interesting things it contains, any ten 
square feet of space in which we may, at any moment, happen 
to be standing. Only we can not see them. We need the 
fairy, not to transport us to some other, magic land, but 
merely to open our bhnded eyes. And yet, near to us as 
this fairy land in one sense is, it is in another sense very far 
away. For the dimness of vision which shuts out from us 
the richness of this magic world is not a dimness of the 
physical eye, for the correction of which an optician may 
grind a lens in a day, but a dimness of the mind itself, and 
the only optician who can grind a lens to clear up the hazi- 
ness of this ^^ mental eye^' is oneself, and we can do it only 
through long years and infinite care. For the lens must be 
gradually ground out of our own experience and, as time goes 



2 Human Conduct 

on, adapted to the mind which must see through it. Only 
as this is done can the wealth of this fairy world take on dis- 
tinct outlines and reveal its beauty to him who has earned the 
right to enjoy it. 

But little of this wealth utilized. — ^^ But this/' you say, 
'' is speaking in mysteries. Give us plain directions which 
we can follow. '^ Well, let me say, then, that this fairy 
world is, as the theologians tell us of the Kingdom of Heaven, 
within us. It is a state, a condition, rather than a place. 
We are outside of it only because we have not yet learned 
to see in our world what is really there. We are all much 
like a certain man Professor James mentions, who once 
replied to a biologist, when the marvelously complex struc- 
ture of a worm was shown to him, ^^ Why, I thought the thing 
was nothing but skin and squash. '^ Whether we confess it or 
not, most of us hold an equally unwarranted opinion not only 
of worms but of other phases of reality as well. We see 
only ^^ skin and squash '^ where one with eyes to see what is 
really there would find infinite richness of content. How 
greatly men differ in the extent to which they really see what 
lies about them, you must have often observed. A little 
story — ''Eyes and No-Eyes''— which Kingsley quotes 
illustrates this. It runs, with Kingsley's comments, like this : 

*'Well, Robert, where have you been walking this afternoon?'* 
said Mr. Andrews to one of his pupils at the end of a holiday. 

Robert had been to Broom Heath, and round by Cape Mount, 
and home through the meadows. But it was very dull, he thought. 
He saw hardly a single person. He would much rather have gone 
by the turnpike road. 

Presently in comes Master William, and terribly wet and dirty 
he is. He never before had such a pleasant walk, he says; and 
has brought home his handkerchief full of curiosities. 

He has a piece of mistletoe and wants to know what it is ; he 
has seen a woodpecker and a wheatear, and gathered strange 
flowers on the heath ; he has hunted a pewit because he thought 
its wing was broken, till of course it led him into the bog, and very 
wet he got. 



How our World gets Enriched 3 

But he did not mind it because he fell in with an old man cutting 
turf, who told him all about turf cutting. And then he went up a 
hill and saw a grand prospect and twenty things more ; and so on, 
till he had brought home curiosities enough, and thoughts enough, 
to last him a week. 

Whereupon Mr. Andrews, who seems to have been a very sensible 
old gentleman, tells him all about his curiosities ; and then it comes 
out — if you will believe it — that Master William has been over 
the very same ground as Master Robert, who saw nothing at all. 

Whereupon Mr. Andrews says, wisely enough, in his solemn, 
old-fashioned way : 

'*So it is! One man walks through the world with his eyes 
open, another with his eyes shut ; and upon this difference depends 
all the superiority of knowledge which one man acquires over 
another. I have known sailors who have been in all quarters of 
the world, but who could tell you nothing but the signs of the 
public houses. 

"On the other hand Franklin* could not cross the Channel 
without making observations useful to mankind. The observing 
eye and inquiring mind find matter of improvement and delight 
in every ramble. You, then, William, continue to use your eyes. 
And you, Robert, learn that eyes were given you to use." 

Nor is it only in nature that one man can find so much 
more than another. It is true in every sphere. To the man 
of untrained taste all teas, all wines, all cigars taste alike, 
but to one who is expert in those matters there are endless 
and pronounced differences, and indeed much of the pleasure 
in using these is dependent upon distinguishing between the 
brands. In music, too, there is, you know, the greatest 
difference between men. To one class a symphony is a 
production rich in harmonies, complex yet systematic in 
motives, full of touching variations and delicate over- 
tones — indeed one of the richest and most meaningful 
fragments of reality. Yet to another this very same sym- 
phony may be no more than a simple, irksome brawl. Simi- 
larly, when two persons read the same book, or hear the 
same speech, it may be to one full of food for thought but 
to the other empty and insipid. Indeed in countless ways 



4 Human Conduct 

the world is immensely bigger for one class of men than for 
another. 

Our subjective contribution. — Now why is it that some 
men see so much more in the world than others? The 
external environment is the same. Why not the experi- 
ence? There must be some other factor than the object 
itself, some subjective factor. It must be that we see with 
the mind as well as the eye. Let us, then, consider whether 
this is really true, whether what is presented from without 
is really the only element of experience. 

Selection. — In the first place we shall find, I think, that 
not everything presented to our senses is admitted into 
consciousness. Just now, as you read, are you conscious 
of all that is battering upon your senses? Your nervous 
system is sending messages to your brain about the temper- 
ature of the room, but you are probably not heeding them; 
sounds fall upon your ear but in vain. Pressure sensations 
from your chair and desk are being reported, but you are 
oblivious of them. The only sensation that really gets a 
hearing is that of the series of words which make up these 
sentences. Even in this you are neglecting the greater part. 
You take no explicit notice of the individual letters or even 
the separate words, of the color of the type, etc., while you 
are absorbed in the reading. From the whole mass of 
sensations beating upon your body, your mind reaches out 
and welcomes only that small fraction which it itself desires. 
All the rest make merely a vague background for that which 
specifically interests you. 

And so it is in general. If you are looking at a flower, 
the singing of the birds, the fanning of the breeze, and the 
color of the sky are forgotten, though they as well as it are 
impinging upon your sense organs. When your friend is re- 
lating to you an incident, all else but the sound of his words, 
and such other facts as are connected with this, are excluded 
from your mind. Indeed even from the object to which you 



How our World gets Enriched 5 

do attend, you take in the merest fragment of what you might, 
as you will readily see if you will consider how few details 
you have really noted in the last chair that you have ob- 
served. 

Addition. — But on the other hand, we add to what we 
do pick out for attention. Only a meager portion of the 
characteristics which we attribute to an object is given to 
us through sense. The remainder we ourselves contribute. 
You see a round yellow spot with a certain play of light and 
shade upon it. Immediately you say it is an orange and 
your mouth begins to water as you contemplate it. But sense 
hq^s not shown it to you as an orange. To the peculiar play 
of light and shade upon it you have yourself attached the 
notion of sphericity, because you have usually found spherical 
objects give that sort of effect. From many little factors, 
none of which presented it to you directly, you have inferred 
first its position and then its size. Its taste, the structure 
of its interior parts, etc., all come vaguely into your mind 
and together they constitute the idea which you call orange. 
It is not the little yellow spot, but the multitude of associ- 
ated ideas coming over from your past experience, which 
this little dab of yellow only serves to call up, that enables 
you to know it as an orange. How much must you really 
observe before you are ready to call an object a table ? Only 
a distorted parallelogram for its top and a leg or two. The 
rest of it you supply out of your own mind. A rattling, broken 
noise falls on your ear and forthwith you say to yourself — 
^^ A wagon is passing by.'' Yet all but the merest fragment 
of the experience of the passing wagon comes from within 
yourself. An artist makes a few strokes with his pencil, 
and you, generously filling in the outline from your own 
imagination, acknowledge it to be a completed human face. 
You even go further and, from trifling curves in the lines, 
assign to the sketch a mood or even a permanent character, 
and permit your soul to be thrilled by the delusion. 



Human Conduct 



\ 

\ 

s 
\ 
\ 

N 
\ 

\ 
\ 



Fig. 1. 



Recasting, — Nor do we from within merely take away 
from or add to what is presented. We thoroughly reconstruct 

it — make it over — 
until it is tinged 
through and through 
with our own person- 
ality. No matter how 
unorganized our data 
may be, we insist upon 
thrusting upon them 
some sort of order. 
To assure yourself of 
that, look at the ac- 
companying figures. They are really only lines on a flat 
surface, but it is extremely difficult to see them as no more 
than that. You almost irresistibly see them as certain solids, 
just because you can not help adding, from yonv own mind, 
some interpretation that 
wall give them a meaning. 
Indeed you never look 
out into reality but that 
you project much of your- 
self into it. If you at- 
tempt to count a nestful 
of eggs, they immediately 
group themselves for you 
into threes, though actu- 
ally in the nest they are 
not so grouped. If you 
look out upon a cornfield, 
you at once find yourself 
tracing out lines through 
it, though it is just as 
valid to see the field as a mere aggregate of hills. It is 
a poor drawing that does not convey some meaning, and a 




Fig. 2. 



How our World gets Enriched 7 

word or sentence must be much distorted before you will 
misunderstand it. The effort is sufficient to give the sug- 
gestion and out of your own mind you supply what should 
be there. If you get drowsy you may read ^^ petty ^^ or 
even '^ poodle '^ for '^ pretty/' but ten to one you will not 
utter some mere nonsense word. If you are trying hard to 
recognize some obscure object, you see it now as this definite 
thing, again as that definite thing, but never as a mere chaos. 
It always has for you some meaningful form. The writer's 
class in Experimental Psychology was confronted with a 
dozen ink spots made merely at random. These spots 
had absolutely no symbolical form, yet every member of 
the class took each one of them to represent some definite 
object like a dog, an animaFs skin, a map of Africa, etc. 
It is indeed impossible to take the world simply as it is. We 
must take its parts and group them into such forms as will 
have meaning, even though we ourselves must put the greater 
part of that meaning there out of our own minds. 

Platans figure. — It is clear, then, that our mental atti- 
tude determines what our world is to be for us. The ex- 
ternal world is not merely thrust upon us from without. 
The mind itself reaches out for such parts of it as it knows 
how, or cares, to take. The old philosopher, Plato, tells 
us that there comes an image from the outer object toward 
the eye ; and that out from the eye there flows sight to meet 
the object. The union of these two, he says, somehow pro- 
duces the actual perception of the object. The outer im- 
pression alone, according to Plato, is not enough ; we must 
do our part ; we must meet the impression halfway. Now, 
crude as this psychology of the old Greek philosopher sounds, 
it is essentially true. Before we can perceive any object 
we must go out mentally toward it and contribute to it much 
of its experienced content, so that it contains as much of 
us as of itself. Only to-day psychologists describe this act 
in less crude terms than Plato did. 



8 Human Conduct 

Interpreting by preperception. — By way of getting at the 
present-day account of the matter, let us consider what 
happens when one is hunting for some object. Have you 
ever noticed that you can find a book on the hbrary shelves 
much more readily if you know not only its title but also 
what it looks like — its size, the color of its binding, etc. ? 
Then, in looking for the book, you carry a framework of 
it in your mind, and your attention is arrested only on those 
volumes which appear to fit into this framework. Without 
such framework in mind it is extremely difficult to find the 
book. If you have several books to hunt, it is generally 
necessary to seek one of them at a time, with the mind 
set specifically in shape to grasp the one then looked for. 
It is in the same way that you hunt for a given word or quo- 
tation on the printed page. You bring to the page a mental 
picture of what the matter sought is to be like, and, as soon 
as you meet the thing which fits into your mental framework, 
you recognize it immediately. Similarly you can pick out of 
a chorus the voice of a friend, or out of an orchestra one of 
its instruments, if you bring to the situation a clear image 
of how it is to sound, formed from previous acquaintance, 
and strain actively for that which will fulfill this image. 

But even when you are not consciously searching for a 
definite object essentially the same thing is true. The mind 
is always actively fishing, never merely passively receiving 
what is thrust upon it. Suppose you are trying to make out 
what an object, approaching j^ou at a distance, is. You 
try first this tentative perception, then that, until the cor- 
rect one is found. You suppose, say, that the image is of 
a cow and proceed to see whether, in certain critical respects, 
it behaves like a cow. If not you give up that attempt 
and suppose that it is a man. This you try out and, if you 
find it not verified, you try the supposition that it is a stump, 
etc., until you find a mental picture that will w^ork. Usually, 
however, these attempts of the mind to fit its advance 



How our World gets Enriched 9 

image upon the object are not so obvious. Yet they are al- 
ways there. Only when the object is easily recognized, you 
run down incorrect trials so rapidly and hit so quickly upon 
the one that will fit that you do not notice the nature of the 




Fig. 3. 

process. But you never perceive any object except by the 
mind's running out to meet it and asking whether it is not 
so and so. What objects are, is not thrust upon you, but 
your mind always first goes fishing for them with a net that it 
itself has fabricated, and these external objects must merely 
wait until they can respond — ^^ Yes, now youVe got me." 



10 



Human Conduct 




Fig. 4. 



Professor Witmer describes this process by saying that 
we always bring to our object a preperception of it. From 

our past experience we are 
able to imagine to our- 
selves how it is to look, 
or sound, or taste, or op- 
erate, and then fish for it 
with this mental net. The 
following figures, in addi- 
tion to the illustrations 
given above, will help you 
to convince yourself that 
this is true. First think 
to yourself how a square 
tunnel would appear if you 
looked through it from 
just a little distance away. Now look at figure 4 and see if 
you can not see it in that way. Now think how a frustum of 
a pyramid, with its smaller base turned toward you, should 
appear, and see if you can 
not interpret the same 
figure in this way also. 
Similarl}^ you can see fig- 
ure 5 as a set of stairs 
from above or from below, 
according to the preper- 
ception which you bring 
to the diagram. 

Apperception. — It is 
thus plain that you see 
your world in a way de- 
termined by what you, 
at the time, have in mind. 
You do not simply perceive it as it is ; you apperceive it — 
that is, you assimilate it to a body of experience which you 




How our World gets Enriched ii 

have previously acquired. This word " apperception ^' is a 
most important word in modern Psychology, and it means 
simply this fact, which we have been describing, that you do 
not take your world merely as it is, but that the mind reaches 
out for it from within, that 3^ou look at it from a certain 
angle, and that you read a meaning into it which is deter- 
mined by what is in your mind. What the thing means to 
you is thus determined 'by the ^^ mass ^^ of experience acquired 
in your past. It is because you have seen steps from above 
and from below that you can see the figure just referred to in 
those ways. Otherwise it would be impossible. If your 
experience had dealt more largely with a zigzag plain figure 
you would have seen it in that way. The students referred 
to above saw an ink spot as an animars skin if they had been 
hunters, as a map of Africa if they had been studying that 
continent, etc. But evidently no one can bring as a means 
of interpretation any preperception which he has not de- 
veloped in his own previous experience. 

Our world rich as we make it. — You see, then, how very 
much of ourselves we project into the outer world. It is 
quite as much us as it is itself. If it seems rich and full of 
joy, that is not unlikely a projection of our own inner rich- 
ness ; if it seems poor and barren, that may be due to our 
own poverty of soul. Emerson inquires : '^ What can we see 
or acquire but what we are? '^ and some twenty-five cen- 
turies ago the old philosopher, Heraclitus, remarked, ^^ It 
takes a man to recognize a man.^^ You can not make the 
world small for a big man. '^ He is never alone who is 
attended with great thoughts. ^^ By the half that he ap- 
perceptively contributes to the environment he can touch 
up with splendor the most unpromising waste. 

Olivia, in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, replies to her 
suitor's messenger, 

I will not be so hard-hearted. I will give out divers schedules 
of my beauty ; it shall be inventoried, and every particle and uten- 



12 Human Conduct 

sil labeled to my will ; as, item, two lips, indifferent red ; item, two 
gray eyes with lids to them ; item, one neck, one chin, etc. 

And really this tabulation represents all that Olivia was in 
herself. Yet she was infinitely more to the love-sick prince. 
Why ? Because he overlaid and enriched this external frame- 
work with a radiance springing from his own infatuation. He 
himself put into his sweetheart, as all lovers do, most of what 
he felt her to be. Similarly our fellow citizens, who have 
traveled abroad, tell us how sublimely beautiful the Ameri- 
can flag looks to them when they see it for the first time 
after a long absence. Surely this beauty is not in the com- 
bination of stars and stripes. It is a beauty born rather 
within the patriotic soul, and merely laid upon the gaudily 
colored textile to touch it up with glory. And so it is in 
general. The greater part of the content we see in reality 
is actually added to the object from within our own souls by 
our mode of apperceiving it. 

The way to fairyland. — And now I am ready to tell you 
the way to that fairyland spoken of at the beginning of this 
chapter. .It is merely to enrich your own life. You only 
need your eyes opened. But you see with your mind even 
more than with your eyes, and the secret of open eyes is 
a well-stored soul. What you, have got in the past — and 
every iota of it — will affect your mode of apperceiving 
for all the future. If you have learned in Physics the scien- 
tific facts about expansion and contraction due to heat, you 
can never again see a cracked sidewalk in the same manner 
as before. In some subtle way there will lurk at least a 
vague sense of the cause of its cracks, and the sidewalk will 
be a different and a more meaningful thing to you. When 
you study Botany, a flower becomes forever changed in mean- 
ing. After you have read the ^^ Forest Hymn'' the woods 
must inevitably take on an added significance. Indeed you 
can get no item of information that does not have its share in 
transforming and reconstructing the whole realm to which 



How our World gets Enriched 13 

it belongs. To be sure you will be unconscious of all this. 
You will be unaware that your world has changed — and 
grown — for apperception is a very subtle process, and you 
are as unconscious of its influence as you ordinarily are of 
your prejudices — to which indeed it is closely related. 
You glide into the new and larger way of looking at things 
so gradually that you do not feel the shock. But certainly 
all of your past acquisitions — all that you have made of 
yourself mentally — do gather about any situation which 
confronts you and tinge it to the core. 

And so the pathway to the fairyland is in one sense short. 
It does not belong to another world, but lies all about for 
him who can perceive it. And yet, in another sense, that 
pathway is long and devious. For, though you build your 
own world, you can not build it capriciously. You build 
it out of the forms that your own past has supplied, and 
these forms must be wrought out through long and labori- 
ous effort. So before you can receive the outer wealth, you 
must have won an equal inner wealth to match it. You can 
not afford, therefore, to neglect any opportunity to enrich 
your inner life. You should pass by no opportunity to get 
any sort of legitimate information, for every such new mental 
acquisition is an added tool with which you can mine from 
your outer world new stores of wealth. If you compla- 
cently rest in the breadth of training to which you have al- 
ready attained, and drift day by day through essentially 
the same round of experiences, your whole world will re- 
main commensurately barren. If, on the other hand, you 
keep alert and open-minded, dip into any field which is 
likely to yield some new fact, — if, by observation, by 
reading, and by attendance at lectures, you acquire many 
different viewpoints, your whole world will grow with the 
growth of your inner life. Whether it will pay thus to edu- 
cate yourself is then a much broader question than whether 
it will increase your salary. Many things are worth learn- 



14 Human Conduct 

ing that are of no commercial value. The question is one 
of culture, of humanity, of spiritual depth and breadth — 
whether it is more worth while to live in a world that is big 
with a rich, varied, and meaningful content than in one that 
is meager, cramped, sterile. For mental possessions are no 
mere luxuries that you must either sell for a price or let rust 
away within. They are always active, dynamic, creative, 
and it is they that enlarge your habitation from a narrow- 
walled dungeon, where all but a few sterile forms are shadowy 
and indistinct, to a sun-lit realm of wide horizon and rich 
and clear-cut configuration. 

EXERCISES 

1. Is it true that "seeing is believing," or is it rather true that 
*' believing is seeing"? 

2. Using some object in the room as an illustration, show that 
an object as apperceived is reconstructed from within your own 
mind. 

3. Have you ever overlooked an object for which you were 
searching on account of having a wrong advance image (preper- 
ception) of it? Explain. 

4. Can you think of any case where the mind does not '*go 
fishing" for its object, but has that object thrust upon it while 
passive ? 

5. Is it true that a man can find in his world only the counter- 
part of himself ? Why? 

6. Give illustrations of fields in which your reading and study 
have fitted you to see more than would have been possible other- 
wise. 



CHAPTER II 

HOW MISUNDERSTANDINGS ARISE 

Double Apperception. — Of figures, — You have doubtless 
been impressed by the very great differences between men in 
respect to the value which they attach to the same object. 
Hughes, in apologizing for Tom Brown's strange infatuation 
for Miss Patt}^, remarks, 

There is no accounting of tastes, and it is fortunate that some 
like apples and some onions. 

You may, perhaps, get a hint as to why one person should 
be so ravished by an object to which others are indifferent 
by examining Figure 6, the picture on page 16. 

What we have here is a situation which yields to double 
interpretation. Similar situations, equally susceptible of 
double interpretation, are often met, as the following illus- 
trations show. Figure 7 can be seen as a duck^s head or as 
a rabbit's head. Figure 8 can be apperceived as a frustum 
of a pyramid with the smaller base either toward you or away 
from you, according as you look for one result or the other. 
Figure 9 is a plane figure with zigzag lines, a set of stairs 
from above, or a set of stairs from beneath. Figure 10 can 
be seen as a set of six cubes with. their shaded bases above, 
or as a set of seven cubes with their shaded bases below. 

Into each of the following frameworks of words you can 
put any one of several meanings : 

d - -k - - se s ' - ed f - rm 

15 



i6 



Human Conduct 



Now in these ^mple situations you have a clue to most 
of hfe^s misunderstandings. They are only double inter- 
pretations of situations which yield themselves to two ways 




Fig. 6. 
A girl and her grandmother — find both. 



How Misunderstandings Arise 



17 



of being taken. And you can learn how to estimate and to 
avoid them from a study of the psychology of these trifling 

cases. 

Explanation. —' Why, then, is it that you can see in the * 
same objective presentation several different meanings? It 




Fig. 7. 

is because, as we learned in our last chapter, you never 
see anything merely as it is in itself. You always contribute 
something out of your own mind by way of interpretation. 
You do not merely perceive it, but apperceive it. This you 
do by bringing to it, as we have learned, a preperception of 
it _ an expectation of what it is to be. And now the reason 
why you can get several meanings out of the same objective 
situation is that you bring different preperceptions to it. 
Thus the frustum of the pyramid you can see with the 
small base toward you if you shape your preperception in 
that way, or with the small base away from you if in that 
way. So you can see the stairs as from above if you throw 
your mind into the right mold in advance, or as from below 
if you screw your mental framework, before approaching 



Human Conduct 




Fig. 8. 



the diagram, into that bias. When you shift from one inter- 
pretation to another you are aware of gathering yourself 

together mentally in a to- 
tally different way. Thus, 
when interpreting d - - k 
as duck, your mental con- 
tent, in terms of whichyou 
read meaning into the pres- 
entation, is built up in a 
certain way. When, how- 
ever, you come to see it as 
desk, you feel that mental 
content entirely shift. It 
is as if you were looking 
at the presentation from a 
new position in space. 
And so here, in our study of apperception, we go a step 
beyond that of the last chapter. There we learned that what 
a thing means to us is determined very largely by what is in 
our own minds by reason 
of our past experience. 
But now we see that the 
apperception is due not 
only to what we have ex- 
perienced, but to what we, 
at the moment, have in 
mind. When we bring 
one '' mass '^ of conscious- 
ness to the object, we get 
one result ; when we bring 
a different ^^mass,'' we 
get a different result. Or, 
rather, when our con- 
sciousness is organized about one " pivot '^ or " focus/^ 
we apperceive in one way ; when organized about another 




Fig. 9. 



How Misunderstandings Arise 



19 



'' focus/^ in a different way. Any situation is thus capable 
of having quite different meanings to different persons, or 




Fig. 10. 
Copied, by permission, from Witmer's Analytic Psychology. 

even to the same person at different times, according to the 
way in which it is apperceived. 

Of nature. — A conversation of Polonius and the mad 
Hamlet illustrates this possibility of change of mode of 
apperception with its resultant change of meaning : 

Hamlet. Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in the shape 
of a camel? 
Polonius. 
Hamlet. 
Polonius, 
Hamlet, 
Polonius. 



By the mass, and 'tis a camel indeed. 
Methinks it is like a weasel. 

It is backed Hke a weasel. 
Or like a whale. 

Very like a whale. 



In a little poem, '' The Artist and the Poet/' Miss Wieand 
portrays the very different values found in the same land- 



20 Human Conduct 

scape by men of different interests, and hence different angles 
of apperception, the artist seeing the world in terms of 
color, the poet in terms of sound : 

Two stood upon a hilltop, looking far 
Across the summer landscape, and to each 
Appeared a different beauty in the scene. 
The artist saw the sunlight shining gold, 
The fleecy clouds, the waving green of trees, 
The shadows here, the gleam of rivers there, 
The shifting lights ; and on his canvas, true 
He painted the fair vision as he saw. 

******* 

The poet saw, and through his inmost soul 

A thrill full-sweet swept ... 

And joyously he sang the wind's gay song 

As riotous it swept o'er hill and vale ; 

The triumph song of waters rushing down 

To join the quiet river song below ; 

The call of wood-birds ; summer's many sounds 

Indefinite, yet vocal ; and the hum 

Of summer bees and merry winged things. 

Of expressions, — You have observed, too, without doubt, 
what radically different meanings can be found in the same 
word or the same expression. You remember the response 
of the Delphian Oracle, when Croesus came to inquire what 
would be the result if he made war upon Cyrus, that, if he 
did so, he would destroy a great empire. Elated, the old 
king made the assault but found, to his dismay, that the 
great empire which he was to destroy was his own instead of 
that of his enemy. Sermons widely different, if not opposed 
in spirit, are often preached from the same text. Especially 
when expressions are taken out of their context, they can 
be construed in ways of which the author never dreamed. 
It is indeed difficult so to phrase an expression that it is 
not capable of yielding more than one plausible meaning, as 
writers of legal documents and formulators of questions for 
debate have frequently experienced. 



How Misunderstandings Arise 21 

Summary. — Now what do all these illustrations really 
show ? Merely something like this : We never see our 
world as it is. We get it in a way that is colored by what 
we already have in mind. But sometimes our mental con- 
tent is cast in one mold and sometimes in another. Hence 
we apperceive a situation now in one way and again in 
another, and so find in it different meanings. Thus, when 
we build up our mental content — our ^^ apperception 
mass ^^ — in one way we can see the stairs as from above, 
or the cubes as right side up ; when we build it up in another 
way, we can see them in the opposite position. It is the 
'' set ^^ of the mind that determines what objects shall mean. 
And, in the same way, though much more easily, one person 
may bring one mental attitude — one mental ^^set,'' or con- 
tent — to the situation while another brings a different one, 
and in consequence the two apperceive it radically differently. 

Double interpretation in wider field. — Now, so far as 
our illustrations have gone, this fact of differences in in- 
terpretation due to differences in apperception are interest- 
ing enough, but not very serious. The same law, however, 
does involve consequences that are extremely serious, — even 
tragic. For it holds just as well of the weightiest matters 
as of the most trivial. We misunderstand each other in re- 
spect to some of the most vital problems of life merely be- 
cause we apperceive the facts in the case from different 
angles. Here it is not so easy to compare notes and correct 
our mistakes, and unfortunate, even fatal, misunderstand- 
ings arise and persist, and no small share of men's sorrows 
are to be traced to this simple psychological cause. Mis- 
understandings thus grounded have lighted the fires of the 
martyrs of all ages, have incited all wars, and have divided 
men everywhere into mutually hostile classes. 

Transubstantiation. — To illustrate this, take the old 
theological doctrine of '' Transubstantiation,'' — the doc- 
trine that the bread and wine of the gacrament are turned 



22 Human Conduct 

into the actual body and blood of Christ. There was among 
the old schoolmen a distinction between the ^^ essence ^' 
and the ^^ accidents '^ of a body — between what it is in its 
inner character or intent and what it is in its sensible quali- 
ties that can be severally examined and counted. Now 
what the orthodox meant by the doctrine of Transubstanti- 
ation was that in essence the sacraments had changed. In 
the new use to which they were put they stood for a different 
thing. In the mind of God, who sees them for what they 
are worth, they have been transmuted. A thing's deepest 
nature lies in what it is good for — what it is used as — 
and in this deepest nature the bread and wine were trans- 
formed when they ceased to be articles to eat and drink for 
nourishment, and became embodiments of the purpose of 
the Lord's Supper. Their chemical and physical properties 
had, to be sure, remained the same, but this was but a super- 
ficial matter. The opponents of the doctrine, however, 
were thinking of the accidents of the sacrament — of its 
molecular structure, its size, its shape, etc. They saw clearly 
that these did not change and held it absurd, in consequence, 
and even sacrilegious, to believe that the bread and wine 
were transformed into the body and blood of the Saviour. 

Now both were right. Each found in the doctrine one 
of its possible meanings, and supposed that he had found its 
whole and necessary meaning. Each party was charac- 
terized by a certain bent of mind. He was thrown perma- 
nently into some such mental attitude as that which tempo- 
rarily characterized you when you saw the figure above as 
a stairway from beneath. Thus he was able to apperceive 
the situation in only one way. To each, in consequence, 
the other seemed a fool. Yet these two modes of apper- 
ceiving the problem were each legitimate. They were sup- 
plementary rather than contradictory. Yet over this sup- 
posed disagreement discussion raged for ^ century and the 
blood of many a martyr was spilled. 



How Misunderstandings Arise 23 

Theory of evolution. — The theory of evolution is an- 
other illustration of misunderstanding arising out of differ- 
ent modes of apperceiving the same doctrine. The theory 
itself is that all higher forms have come, by unbroken de- 
velopment, from lower ones. Approaching this question 
with a mind habitually bent into theological interrogation 
points, one set of people apperceive the doctrine as only an 
elaborate refutation of the divine creation of the world. 
On the other hand, approaching the doctrine with a mind 
set in the modern scientific mold, another class looks upon the 
theory as an explanation of how all the parts of the universe 
hang together in one unbroken system. To the one class 
the theory is primarily a theological denial ; to the other 
primarily a scientific affirmation. If only each could do for 
a moment what you were required to do when you saw the 
figure above as a set of stairs from beneath, i.e, voluntarily 
reshape his mental attitude so as to apperceive from a new 
angle, he would no longer consider his opponent a fool. 
It would become apparent to him that both viewpoints con- 
tain truth, and that one has the whole truth only when both 
are combined, when one sees the universe as hanging to- 
gether in a developing system and yet divinely created and 
sustained. 

Importance of apperception from many angles. — In fact, 
persons who persist in looking at any situation in only one 
way are like two observers on opposite sides of a house, 
one contending that he knows the house has a bay window 
because he sees it, and the other contending, with equal 
emphasis, that it does not have because he does not see it. 
If the observer behind the house could go around to the front, 
while he in front made a tour to the back, they would find 
a mode of reconciling their differences without either giving 
up his part of the truth. Certainly by going all around a 
house, and viewing it from every angle, one would have a 
fuller and more balanced notion of it. And, similarly, by 



24 Human Conduct 

adopting in turn many different standpoints in the consid- 
eration of any problem — by apperceiving it, that is, in as 
many ways as possible — one can get a much saner and 
more complete grasp upon it. To be able (or willing, which 
amounts to much the same thing) to see a matter from only 
one standpoint is the essence of bigotry and narrow-minded- 
ness, while to be able — and willing — to see it from many 
angles is the essence of broad-mindedness. 

Difficulty of balanced apperception. — Lack of experience, — 
But important as it is to be able to put oneself in 
another's position, and see a problem through his eyes, it is 
an extremely difficult thing to do. Many people are de- 
barred from doing it by actual lack of experience. To ap- 
perceive in the way in which another does, one must have 
had the essential elements of the experience that he has had. 
One can build different ^^ apperception masses '^ out of the 
same past experience, but one can not build the same mass 
out of different experiences. If the theologian has never 
been trained in scientific thinking, he can not adopt the 
standpoint of the evolutionist ; and if the scientist has not 
had at least the basic elements of religious ideas, he can not 
possibly look through the theologian's eyes, however good 
may be his intentions. It is always difficult for persons 
whose work, whose thought, and whose reading lie in totally 
different fields to understand each other. The only sal- 
vation in this situation is for him who wishes to be a whole 
man to acquaint himself, through thought, reading, and 
direct experience, with as many and diverse phases of life 
as possible, and thus fit himself to take understandingly and 
sympathetically the viewpoint of many different men. 

Habit. — Again others, who have had a wider range of 
experience, have permitted themselves to become confirmed 
in a single, ever persistent attitude. They have allowed their 
mental content to crystallize in some definite shape, so that 
they can apperceive in only one dominant way. Their 



How Misunderstandings Arise 25 

minds have gravitated into a certain mold with time, just 
as a suit of clothes assumes with use a certain shape. You 
have doubtless seen how men, after they have looked at a 
matter for a long time in one way, can scarcely be brought 
to see it in any other light. If we do not constantly struggle 
to keep ourselves fresh and open-minded we all fall, before 
we know it, into certain fixed and one-sided ways of looking 
at lifers problems. Says Professor James : 

There is an everlasting struggle in every mind between the 
tendency to keep unchanged, and the tendency to renovate, its 
ideas. Our education is a ceaseless compromise between the con- 
servative and the progressive factors. Every new experience must 
be disposed of under some old head. The great point is to find 
the head which has to be least altered to take it in. Certain 
Polynesian natives, seeing horses for the first time, called them 
pigs, that being the nearest head. My child of two played for a 
week with the first orange that was given him, calling it a ''ball.*' 
He called the first whole eggs he saw "potatoes," having been ac- 
customed to see his eggs broken into a glass, and his potatoes 
without the skin. A folding pocket cork screw he unhesitatingly 
called "bad scissors." Hardly any one of us can make new heads 
easily when fresh experiences come. Most of us grow more and 
more enslaved to the stock conceptions with which we have once 
become familiar, and less and less capable of assimilating impres- 
sions in any but the old ways. Old fogyism is, in short, the in- 
evitable terminus to which life sweeps us on. Objects which 
violate our established habits of "apperception*' are simply not 
taken account of at all ; or if, on some occasion, we are forced by 
dint of argument to admit their existence, twenty-four hours later 
the admission is as if it were not, and every trace of the unassimi- 
lable truth has vanished from our thoughts. Genius, in truth, 
means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual 
way. 

Personal interest. — In the third place, our apperception 
is unbalanced by our personal interests. To a degree which 
it is difficult to believe, our minds are shaped for the service 
of our selves. When our interests emphatically demand 
that we justify a certain bit of conduct, we will find a way of 



26 Human Conduct 

looking at it that will afford the justification. But, on the 
other hand, if a person or a proposal is prejudicial to our wel- 
fare we will naturally enough apperceive them as in them- 
selves evil. It is extremely difl&cult to see straight where 
our own interests are at stake. This is not because we 
are consciously selfish, but because the mental attitude; 
which is so large a factor in determining the meaning of a 
situation, is by nature built up around our own welfare as 
a pivot. This propensity we can, of course, never com- 
pletely set aside ; but we can at least cultivate a recognition 
of its influence, seek, so far as possible, to be impersonal in 
our estimate of the situation, and remember that the other 
fellow is perhaps less in the wrong than he seems, from our 
viewpoint, to be. 

Emotion. — And finally, emotion may distort our apper- 
ception. As teachers we conceive an admiration for a cer- 
tain textbook and forthwith close our ears to any arguments 
against it, nor will we hear sympathetically the case of its 
competitor. We develop a warm friendship for a chum and, 
in consequence, minimize his faults and magnify his vir- 
tues, nor will we believe any evil report which we hear about 
him. We become attached to some hero in politics or in 
history and immediately cast about him a halo, filling up with 
imputed worth whatever gaps our knowledge may have left. 
Little whispers to his discredit we simply refuse to admit 
to any consideration. '' Love,'^ particularly, ^' is blind. 
Even the vices and homely qualities of a sweetheart are so 
overlaid with a radiance projected from the mind of the 
lover that they become virtues and elements of beauty. On 
the other hand we conceive a prejudice against a man, and 
in whatever he does we find some unfavorable meaning. 
The mind here has taken a certain '^ set,'^ and the slightest 
effort to disturb that '' set '^ precipitates a flood of emotion, 
which makes balanced thinking impossible. 

This emotional distortion is doubtless the most diflScult 



ji 



How Misunderstandings Arise 27 

to correct of the obstacles to balanced apperception, but 
there is no reason why one should not, for at least moments 
of calm consideration, cultivate an impersonal view of the 
situation. Certainly the creeds and the heroes dear to one's 
heart can be made no less useful by being sanely viewed, 
and even love can, at least at certain critical intervals, af- 
ford to be tempered with discretion. 

Summary. — The misunderstandings used to illustrate 
double apperception in this chapter have been chiefly his- 
torically famous ones, but the same explanation holds of 
those of everyda}^ life. Seldom do differences arise that 
are not due to the presence of two different ways of apper- 
ceiving a situation, each largely legitimate. They would 
not arise at all, or if they did would be easily settled, if each 
party would remember that his view is probably only partial, 
and would try to place himself in the other fellow's position 
and see the matter from his standpoint. One should hesi- 
tate to consider his opponent a fool. After all, both com- 
mon sense and sincerity are pretty evenly distributed,. 
Even when a person is confessedly insincere his attitude 
has, from his own viewpoint, its justification. Our pes- 
simism about the integrity and the sanity of our fellows 
comes largely from our own mental and moral poverty. 

Influence of mood. — A significant application of this 
fact of differences in meaning of a situation when apper- 
ceived in different ways is the influence of our mood upon 
our view of affairs. Just as when we look through a colored 
glass all the world takes on the hue of the medium through 
which we look, so when we apperceive our world in a certain 
mood all situations take on a meaning influenced by that 
mood. Betts quotes the following illustration from the 
diary of a New England minister : 

Wed. Eve. Arrived at the home of Bro. Brown late this evening, 
hungry and tired after a long day in the saddle. Had a bounti- 
ful supper of cold pork, warm bread, bacon and eggs, coUee, and 



28 Human Conduct 

rich pastry. I go to rest feeling that my witness is clear; the 
future is bright ; I feel called to a great and glorious work in 
this place. Bro. Brown's family are godly people. 

The next entry was as follows : 

Thurs. Morn. Awakened late this morning after a troubled 
night. I am very depressed in soul ; the way looks dark ; far from 
being called to work among this people, I am beginning to doubt 
the safety of my own soul. I am afraid the desires of Bro. Brown 
and his family are set too much on carnal things. 

Compare, too, the following two ways of looking at a friend : 

Your kindness, your sympathy, iirst drew 
My heart to love you in those careless days ; 
And hero worship spread its roseate haze 
About the real to make the fancied you ; 



I gave him love for love ; but, deep within, 

I magnified each frailty into sin, 

Each hill-topped foible in the sunset glowed, 

Obscuring vales where rivered \drtues flowed. 

Reproof became reproach, till common grew 

The captious word at every fault I knew. 

He smiled upon the censorship, and bore 

With patient love the touch that wounded sore ; 

Until at length, so had my blindness grown. 

He knew I judged him by his faults alone. 

(Wieand) 

Finding what we look for. — We really see, when we look out 
upon our world, a reflection of ourselves. The pessimistic 
man seems to himself to find ample objective justification 
for his pessimism, while the optimistic man finds equal 
justification for his optimism. For each apperceives in 
the outer world only that which is in harmony with his own 
mood. Henry Ward Beecher thus condemns the cynic : 

The Cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and 
never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in 
darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing 



How Misunderstandings Arise 29 

noble game. . . . Thus his eye strains out every good quality 
and takes in only the bad. . . . The livelong day he will coolly 
sit, with sneering lip, transfixing every character that is presented. 

It is impossible to indulge in such habitual severity of opinion 
upon our fellow men, without injuring the tenderness and delicacy 
of our own feeHngs. A man will be what his most cherished feelings 
are. If he encourage a noble generosity, every feeling will be en- 
riched by it ; if he nurse bitter and envenomed thoughts, his own 
spirit will absorb the poison, and he will crawl among men as a 
bruised adder, whose life is mischief, and whose errand is death. 

He who hunts for flowers will find flowers ; and he who loves 
weeds will find weeds. Let it be remembered that no man, who is 
not himself morally diseased will have a relish for disease in others. 
Reject, then, the morbid ambition of the Cynic, or cease to call 
yourself a man. 

Making allowance for mood. — One must make allow- 
ance for his mood if he is to trust his own estimate of a situ- 
ation. For, apart from some habitual bias which charac- 
terizes one's conduct, such as those illustrated above, one 
does not form exactly the same estimate on two different 
days. An editor will not pass finally upon an important 
paper at one reading. He will lay it aside and go over it a 
second time, testing the correctness of his first impression 
with a subsequent one. One can not pass conclusive opinion 
upon a book or a piece of music at one sitting, for one is 
sometimes surprised to find the next day that he likes the 
things which he at first condemned, or condemns the things 
upon which his first opinion was favorable. 

Control of mood. — Control of physical condition, — Can one 
do anything to control his mood? Doubtless he can do 
much. In the first place mood is not infrequently influenced 
by physical conditions. Dyspepsia, indigestion, a sluggish 
liver, poor ventilation, lack of exercise, or insufficient sleep 
are responsible for many a case of pessimism, while good 
health is a big factor in inducing good spirits. And these 
physical bases of the psychical tone one can ordinarily reach 
and improve. 



30 



Human Conduct 



Control of train of ideas. — In the second place, mood is 
determined by the ideas which are brought, through associ- 
ation, into consciousness. When association is working 
in such a way as to bring in a train of ideas of a certain kind, 
they keep one in a mood which accords with them. If, 
for example, one keeps thinking about his past misfortunes, 
and about future ones that he anticipates may befall him, 
this train of thoughts, together with its fringe of congruent 
associated ideas and feelings, constitutes a somber mood 
which will last as long as the trend of thought continues to 
run in that direction. So the only way to dispel the mood is 
to break up that particular system of ideas as the dominant 
ones in consciousness and replace them with a happier sys- 
tem. This one may be able to do by force of will. One 
may voluntarily set himself to a line of thinking and of act- 
ing which runs counter to that responsible for the undesir- 
able mood. One may set to counting one^s blessings instead 
of one^s misfortunes, or one may prove his power to suc- 
ceed, and get the renewed self-confidence and optimism which 
comes from success, by turning from moody forebodings to 
vigorous work. To the extent to which one can thus sub- 
stitute for the mental content responsible for the unfortunate 
mood a different mental content, to that extent can one 
control the affective tone of consciousness. 

Control of expression. — But, most important and feasible 
of all, one can control mood through controlling its expres- 
sion. Professors James and Lange long ago pointed out to 
us that our emotions are due to the bodily attitudes into 
which we have been thrown. If some incident occurs to 
make us angry we are, by instinct, thrown into a certain 
bodily response. We clench our fists, grit our teeth, the 
muscles of the face and neck grow tense, there are changes 
in the breathing and in the circulation, and contractions of 
many muscles about the chest and abdominal regions. 
Now it is the feeling of these bodily tensions that constitutes 



How Misunderstandings Arise 31 

the emotion of anger. Similarly another situation will 
throw us into a state of slow and heavy breathing, cause a 
peculiar contraction of muscles about the heart, bring a 
^' lump ^^ into the throat and, perhaps, a flood of tears into 
the eyes, and we have, as a sense of this condition, our emo- 
tion of sorrow. 

And so if one can put himself into the bodily attitude 
expressive of the emotion, and can really effect a contrac- 
tion of the deep-seated muscles involved as well as of the 
superficial ones, he will experience the emotion. Any one, 
for example, can work himself into a rage by rehearsing to 
himself a quarrel which he expects to have with some one 
and by going through the motions expressive of this anger. 
Conversely, if one can completely inhibit the bodily expres- 
sion of any emotion, internal muscular tensions as well as 
those of the grosser organs, he can repress the emotion itself. 
As Professor James says : 

Refuse to express a passion and it dies. Count ten before vent- 
ing your anger, and its occasion seems ridiculous. Whistling to 
keep up courage is no mere figiu-e of speech. On the other hand, 
sit all day in a moping posture, sigh, and reply to everything with 
a dismal voice, and your melancholy lingers. There is no more 
valuable precept in moral education than this, as all who have 
experience know : If we wish to conquer undesirable tendencies 
in ourselves, we must assiduously, and in the first instance cold- 
bloodedly, go through the outward movements of those contrary 
dispositions which we prefer to cultivate. . . . Smooth the brow, 
brighten the eye, contract the dorsal rather than the ventral aspect 
of the frame, and speak in a major key, pass the genial compliment, 
and your heart must be frigid indeed if it does not gradually thaw. 

Effect of expression on mood. — And what one says of 
emotion one would say also of mood, for mood differs from 
emotion chiefly in being milder and more prolonged, though 
it is also much less specific — that is, not directed toward 
any particular object. Here it is just as true as in the case 
of emotion that mood tends to follow expression. Walk 



32 Human Conduct 

around with the head hanging forward and the shoulders 
drooping, and a feehng of depression and of lack of self- 
confidence will attend you. Go about with a physical bear- 
ing of coldness and distrust, and like sentiments will be al- 
most sure to guard your soul. On the other hand, walk with 
head erect and shoulders back, wear habitually a smile and 
speak a word of cheer to every one whom you meet, and 
the mood which you are expressing will soon come to sup- 
port the erstwhile voluntary expression. These moods, 
cultivated through the cultivation of their expression, will 
soon come to be fixed, too, through habit, and thus become 
permanent characteristics. Sa3^s Betts : 

If there are emotional habits we are desirous of forming, what 
we have to do is to indulge the emotional expression of the type 
we desire, and the habit will follow. If we wish to form the habit 
of living in a chronic state of the blues, then all we have to do is 
to be blue and act blue sufficiently, and this form of emotional 
expression will become a part of us. If we desire to form the habit 
of living in a happy, cheerful state, we can accomplish this by en- 
couraging the corresponding expression. 

EXERCISES 

1. The landlord of the Rainbow, in Silas Marner, in attempt- 
ing to settle a dispute between two of his patrons, says: *'The 
truth lies atween you, you're both right and you're both wrong, as 
I allays say." Is that a safe assumption for a mediator to make? 
Why? 

2. Why are there so many poHtical parties, or so many religious 
denominations, in the world? Is it possible for more than one of 
these to be right ? 

3. Show that the influence of friends, exercised through sug- 
gestion, is an important factor in determining how one will view a 
situation. Name some other important factors. 

4. Have you ever seen two persons, or groups of persons, differ- 
ing radically on some matter and yet each clinging to his attitude 
at a sacrifice "for the sake of principle"? Can both be sincere? 
How? Give examples. 

5. Can the ability to apperceive in a balanced and many-sided 
way be cultivated? How? 



How Misunderstandings Arise 33 

6. How does mood affect the ideas which come into your mind? 
Are these the cause or the effect of the mood? How can they be 
excluded ? 

7. Give examples from your own experience with music, litera- 
ture, and companions to show that any one moment's estimate of 
their value is not to be wholly trusted. 

8. Can you find exceptions to the principle that a mood can be 
cultivated by assuming the bodily attitude which normally ex- 
presses it? Can you find any way of reconciling these with the 
doctrine set forth in the text? 



CHAPTER III 

HOW OUR SENSES DECEIVE US — ILLUSIONS 

Meaning of illusion. — In our last two chapters we saw 
how the mind always adds a meaning to the data which the 
senses present. In the first chapter our interest was in 
how, by this subjective addition, our world gets enriched ; 
in the second we pointed out how this same fact causes mis- 
understandings, through one person bringing together the 
data into an object of one meaning and another into one 
with a different meaning. In this chapter we shall be deal- 
ing with the same principle, only here we shall see how the 
fact that the mind always supplies a factor may mislead us 
into taking the object for what it is not. This mistaking 
one object for another, due to misinterpretation of what 
our senses present to us, is called illusion. An illusion 
is thus a false perception. Such false perception may re- 
sult in very trivial or in very great distortion of the given 
object, but always the mistake results from the mind^s sup- 
plying to the sense materials the incorrect supplement in- 
stead of the correct one. 

Illustrations of illusions. — Binet gives the following ac- 
count of a very vivid illusion in the experience of his friend : 

One evening when he was walking alone in a country broken 
up by large woods, he perceived in a clearing a large fire lighted. 
Then, immediately after, he saw an encampment of gypsies around 
this fire. There they were, with their bronzed faces, lying on the 
ground and engaged in cooking. The night was dark and the place 
very lonely. Our young man was afraid, he lost his head com- 
pletely, and, brandishing the stick he held in his hand, he dashed 
furiously into the gypsies' camp. A moment later he was in the 

34 



How our Senses Deceive us — Illusions 35 

middle of a pond, convulsively clasping a tree-trunk with his 
arms, and feeling the chill of water which rose as far as his knees. 
Then he saw a will-o'-the-wisp flickering on the surface of the 
pond. It was this shining spot which had been the starting point 
of his sensory illusion. 

Now whence came this completed picture of the gypsies' 
camp? From the same source from which normal percep- 
tions come, except that the subjective factor was somewhat 
larger and certainly less carefully criticized. A meager 
datum presented the occasion and, out of a mind full of 
expectation, there was given the distorted meaning. The 
object was apperceived as more than it really was, just as the 
lines of a previous figure in being seen as a stairway were 
apperceived as more than they really were. Only in this 
case the mind was too ready to project the content which 
its own fears had prepared and hung it, in consequence, 
upon a rack which it would not fit. 

A similar case is that of a servant woman who had married 
a widower above her class. Soon after her admission to 
the new home her nuptial bliss began to be impaired by in- 
sinuations from the children of her husband regarding her 
former station in life. Persistently when she passed she 
heard them whisper ^^ servant, servant. '^ At first the words 
were low and indistinct, and she could not be sure that the 
children were really uttering the hated epithet, but gradu- 
ally they became so distinct that there could no longer be 
any doubt about it. The children were severely punished, 
but in vain. They only denied their guilt. Later it was 
discovered that they were right in this denial, for it was 
found that the bride suffered from an ear defect which gave 
repeatedly" the effect of the sound '^ s-s.^' It was out of her 
expectant mind that she supplied the addition to round out 
this meager presentation into the despised word '^ servant, '' 
the illusion becoming stronger as her own suspicions increased. 

Such illustrations could be multiphed without limit, and 



36 



Human Conduct 



they go only a little beyond what all of us are constantly 
experiencing. Every one has been surprised — and either 
disgusted or amused according to the circumstances — at 
his misinterpretation of simple situations. A dozen times 





Fig. 11. 



a day one momentarily mistakes a strange face for that of 
some friend of whom his mind is full. As one glances through 
the newspaper one stops breathlessly at some word which, 
for the instant, he has mistaken to be the name of some 

object in which he is par- 
ticularly interested. Un- 
der cover of darkness a 
stump along the road is 
taken for a dog or a per- 
son, a hat and coat in a 
room are rounded out into 
a man, or a sheet or even 
a patch of moonlight sup- 
plies abundant materials 
for a ghost. All of these 
what is not there, but of seeing 
We get these illusions not only 




Fig. 12. 



are cases not of seeing 

wrongly what is there. 

from the sense of sight, but from all the others as well : 

hearing, — as where you think your name has been called 



How our Senses Deceive us — Illusions 37 

when the sound was something very different; touch, — as 
where your finger is unknowingly placed upon a crumb and 
you take it to be a bug. Even also smell and taste each 
supply their many examples. We have become so accus- 
tomed to temporary misinterpretations and their quick cor- 
rection that we fail to notice how full of illusions our daily 
lives really are. 

Causes of illusion. — Surroundings. — Now what is the 
reason for all of this distortion of experience? How does it 
happen that many times every day we make false inter- 
pretations instead of true, even when the sense organs are 
in good condition and the external stimulus is in itself plain 
enough? Three reasons may be given. One of the most 
interesting, but from our standpoint least important, is the 
effect of the setting or surroundings of the misinterpreted 
object. Which of the lines in the preceding figures seems to 
you the longest? 




,^^^?^^^^^" 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 



Fig. 13. 



In each case they are exactly the same in length, though it is 
difficult to convince oneself of that fact without measurement. 
Look at the figure above : 



38 



Human Conduct 




Fig. 14. 



silence appears louder than it 
by its relation to other sounds, 
of a room is greatly affected 
by that of the room from 
which we have come. Touch 
sensations, odors, tastes, are 
all modified by the setting in 
which they occur — by what 
we have touched, tasted, or 
smelled just before or just 
afterwards . We j udge noth- 
ing by itself. Everything is 
taken in relation to other 
things — not only to our own 
past experience and our pres- 
ent mental state, as we have 
already seen, but also to 
the surroundings in which it 
occurs. 



The lines are parallel, 
though they do not appear 
to be so. Look at figures 
14 and 15 and compare their 
appearance with what meas- 
urement reveals about their 
regularity. In all of these 
cases we misjudge the object 
in the center of observation 
on account of the influence 
of its surroundings. The 
peripheral lines in the figure 
somehow mislead us . Other 
sensations than the visual 
give us similar illusions. A 
sound breaking in upon 
is, and in quality is affected 
The apparent temperature 




Fig. 15. 



How our Senses Deceive us — Illusions 39 

Habit. — But a more important source of illusion is cus- 
tom, or habit. It is illustrated by the workings of a telescope. 
If you are acquainted with the arrangement of the lenses 
in this instrument you know that their only effect is to 
magnify the image which falls upon the eye. But in general 
when an object casts a large image upon the eye, it is be- 
cause it is near. And so here you follow the usual method 
of interpretation, and see the thing through the telescope 
/ as near when it is in fact far away. Another interesting 
illusion of the same class is that of the train on which 
you are riding seeming to be in motion when it is really stand- 
ing still. You get this illusion when another train is back- 
ing by yours, and it is intensified when trains on both 
sides of your car are in motion in the same direction. 
Here 3^our whole field of vision, outside the car, is in motion. 
But ordinarily when your whole field of vision is in motion, 
it is because you are moving by it, not it by you. Hence 
here you follow your usual custom and feel yourself in motion. 
The only way in which you can dispel the illusion is to look 
down upon the ground, or other stationary object, and 
find that, with reference to it, you are at rest. The ven- 
triloquist produces the same sort of illusion when he makes a 
sound such as would usually come from overhead or from 
the cellar, and the artist who paints a false drawer on a 
piece of furniture counts upon a like tendency. Indeed it 
is upon this that a large part of magic rests. A mode of in- 
terpreting certain activities has been worked out in the past, 
and when a situation which closely resembles these is pre- 
sented, the customary interpretation spontaneously comes up. 
In ninety-nine cases it has been the correct one, and the con- 
nection between the impression and the response has become 
firmly established. In the hundredth case it is a false in- 
terpretation, but nature brings it forth because, on the 
whole, uniformity of response to similar situations is ad- 
vantageous. 



40 Human Conduct 

Expectation. — But, from our standpoint, by far the most 
important source of illusions is expectation. The illus- 
trations given in the opening of this chapter were all of that 
character. One of the best-known illusions due to this 
cause is the ^^ weight illusion. ^^ If two boxes of different 
size, but of the same general appearance, are made of ex- 
actly the same weight, the smaller will appear to the senses 
much the heavier, and even when one knows that they weigh 
the same, one can not overcome the illusion. Similarly one 
will overestimate the weight of shot and underestimate that 
of crackers, and there is probably no one who could per- 
suade himself that a pound of mercury lifted is no heavier 
than a pound of feathers. We expect the large object to be 
heavy and the small one light, and approach them with that 
attitude of mind. It is to this expectant mental attitude 
that the illusion is due. In like manner filled space seems 
larger than the same area of empty space, as the following 
figure will show :' 



Fig. 16. 



To hold so much content we think it should be bigger and 
forthwith proceed to see it as we feel it should be. 



How our Senses Deceive us — Illusions 41 

For the same reason accurate proof reading is a difficult 
task. We are so likely to see a word not as it is but as it 
should be. Thus if we come across the word repirnt we 
are almost sure to accept it as reprint, without at all noticing 
the misspelling. And this tendency is increased in the pro- 
portion in which we are absorbed in the content of what we 
are reading. Books in foreign languages are invariably 
much better edited than those in the vernacular, because 
the proof reader, being less familiar with the words, is less 
likely to see them as they should be and more likely to see 
them as they are. 

Hallucination. — When illusions are very pronounced — so 
pronounced that we experience a complete object when there 
is nothing present at all, or next to nothing — psychologists 
call them hallucinations. These extreme forms of misinter- 
pretation are not met with every day, but yet there are many 
of them on record. It is said that about one person in every 
ten is likely to have had a fairly vivid hallucination some 
time in his life. Professor James cites the following case : 

When a girl of eighteen I was, one evening, engaged with an 
elderly person in a very painful discussion. My distress was so 
great that I took up a thick ivory knitting needle, that was lying 
on the mantel piece, and broke it into small pieces as I talked. 
In the midst of the discussion I was very wishful to know the 
opinion of a brother with whom I had an unusually close rela- 
tionship. I turned round and saw him sitting at the farther end 
of a center-table, with his arms folded (an unusual position with 
him), but, to my dismay, I perceived from the sarcastic expression 
of his mouth that he was not in sympathy with me, was not " taking 
my part " as I should then have expressed it. The surprise cooled 
me, and the discussion was dropped. 

Some minutes after, having occasion to speak to my brother, 
I turned towards him, but he was gone. I inquired when he left 
the room, and was told that he had not been in, which I did not 
believe, thinking that he had come in for a minute and had gone out 
without being noticed. About an hour and a half afterwards he 
appeared and convinced me, with some trouble, that he had never 
been near the house that evening. 



42 Human Conduct 

Binet gives an equally extreme illustration of the nega- 
tive type of hallucination (systematized anaesthesia). 

W being in a trance, we suggested to her that she would 

not see M. Fere when she awoke, but that she would be able to 
hear his voice. Upon her awaking M. Fere places himself before 
her, she does not look at him, he holds his hand out to her, but she 
makes no gesture. ... M. Fere then stands before the door. 
The patient rises, bids us good day, and proceeds toward the door. 
Just as she is going to put her hand on the knob she strikes against 
the invisible body of M. Fere. This unexpected shock makes her 
tremble ; she makes a fresh attempt to go on, but, meeting the same 
inexplicable resistance, she begins to be frightened and refuses to 
renew the attempt. We seize a hat which is lying on the table 
and show it to the patient. She sees it perfectly well, and assures 
herself with her own eyes, as well as with her hands, that it is a 
real body. Then we place it on M. Fere's head. The hat appears 
to the patient as if it were suspended in the air. Words could not 
express her astonishment ; but her surprise reaches its climax 
when M. Fere lifts the hat from his head and salutes her several 
times. . . . Then we take a cloak and hand it to M. Fere, who 
puts it on. ... ** It is,'' she says, **like an empty manikin." . . . 
The furniture moves, . . . the tables and chairs are overturned, . . . 
the things are put back in their places, a purse opens of itself and 
the gold and silver pieces tumble out of it and in again. 

All of this is entirely inexplicable to the patient, who can 
not see at all the gentleman who is doing the business. 

A less extreme instance is that of subjects whom Binet 
hypnotized and then showed plain white cards, suggesting 
that they were the subjects^ portraits. Immediately they 
were seen as such with great clearness : 

The subject . . . describes the pose and the costume, adding to 
the suggested hallucination with his own imagination, and, if the sub- 
ject be a woman, she is usually dissatisfied, finding the portrait 
little flattered. One of them, who was pretty enough, but whose 
complexion was covered with little freckles, said to me one day, when 
looking at her imaginary portrait, *' I have a great many freckles 
but I have not so many of them as that." These plain white cards 
the subject picked out of a pack even days after, no matter how 



How our Senses Deceive us — Illusions 43 

carefully the pack had been shuffled, and upon them still saw her 
portrait, upright, upside down, or lying horizontal, according to 
the position in which the card itself was turned. Evidently the 
completed portrait had been projected upon the little imperfections 
of the card as "nails," and this amazingly meager scheme had 
been generously filled out from the mind's own momentum. 

Frequency of illusion. — These extreme cases are of course 
comparatively rare, yet they differ only in degree from il- 
lusions that are much more common. Instances could be 
found ranging by small steps from these on down to the most 
trivial misinterpretations. As Ladd says, '^ All perception 
is interpretation ; and from partial or mistaken interpre- 
tation all degrees and kinds of illusions and hallucinations 
result. ^^ They are not, therefore, to be looked upon as the 
malady of only the abnormal. We, as normal persons, are 
continually subject to them, in perhaps mild but, for that 
very reason, subtle and dangerous forms, and must be on 
our guard against them. As Ladd again says, ^^ In the nor- 
mal waking life of the average individual a large but indefinite 
amount of illusion and hallucination enters into all his 
sense perceptions.^' Indeed there is no perception in which 
one does not go beyond the facts, supplying the greater part 
of the content out of his own brain, so that Taine goes so 
far as to say that ^^ Perception is true hallucination, '^ and 
Lotze that '^ The whole of our apprehension of the world 
is one great and prolonged deception. '^ Surely the respon- 
sibility which the law of apperception places upon us, in 
requiring that we supplement the objective with a subjective 
factor, is no small responsibility. 

Misinterpretation in wider field. — Expectation, — Illusion 
is technically confined to the misinterpretation of sense 
data. Yet there is a sort of illusion of a much broader char- 
acter than that of the senses, and, without asking the con- 
sent of the technical psychologists, we shall include this 
broader field in our discussion. Not only simple sense data, 



44 Human Conduct 

but every situation with which we deal, we are hkely to ap- 
perceive in a false way, and under exactly the same condi- 
tions as those which give us sensory illusions. We find here 
what we expect to find, just as we do with sensible objects. 
The person who is looking for an insult will seem to find one 
in expressions that in themselves are innocent. One who is 
looking for scandal will misread the most harmless activities 
in a way to justify gossip. Indeed every speech or con- 
versation which we hear, or book which we read, we are likely 
to misconstrue in exactly the same way as we misinterpret a 
word to make it conform to our mental image of what it 
ought to be. But this is to suffer a sort of intellectual illusion. 
In fact every one who sees his world with a bias, instead of 
just as it is, may be said to have an illusion. But how fre- 
quent — indeed how universal — this is we have already 
abundantly seen. 

Rounding into symmetry. — Perhaps the most prolific 
source of illusion in this broader sense is found in our tend- 
ency to touch up every situation so as to make it aestheti- 
cally complete. We have already seen how one will take a 
meager datum and round it out into a complete object — and 
sometimes the wrong object. Thus a sheet is rounded out 
into a ghost, or the grating of a file into the sound of one's 
name. Now this same tendency holds universally. With- 
out one's knowledge or intention one is disposed to round 
out every situation into symmetrical detail. Professor 
Mlinsterberg once gave a lecture on peace which aroused 
an auditor to an immediate, passionate reply. In describing 
the event one newspaper man said the professor stood, during 
the reply, white with anger ; another that his face was livid 
with excitement. One said that he continually smiled ; 
another, that he remained consistently grave. One held 
that the speaker walked violently back and forth while re- 
plying, while another wrote that he stood by the professor 
and patronizingly patted him on the shoulder. And yet 



How our Senses Deceive us — Illusions 45 

no one intentionally lied. Each supplied what his feelings 
of congruity in the situation demanded — thought he saw 
what he felt he ought to see. 

An even more startling instance of how we distort the 
facts in the interest of making the situation symmetrical is 
the following. A meeting of eminent jurists, psychologists, 
and physicians in Goettingen some time ago was disturbed 
by a scene outside. Presently a clown and a negro rushed 
into the very room where the association was meeting, a 
tussle ensued in which one was floored, a shot was fired, and 
the two speedily left the room. The president, who had 
arranged the affair as an experiment unknown to the others, 
begged the members to write down very carefully what 
they saw, as he was sure the matter would come before the 
courts. Now, notwithstanding the fact that these men were 
all trained observers, these accounts showed the most sur- 
prising discrepancies. Only six among the forty did not 
make false statements, and in more than half of them ten 
per cent of the replies were wrong. Although the negro had 
nothing on his head, only four persons noticed this, the 
others assigning him a derby, a high hat, etc. He had white 
trousers and a black jacket, but red, brown, striped, or coffee- 
colored suits were invented for him. And yet these were 
eminent scientists preparing an account for the courts im- 
mediately after the incident had occurred. Now does not 
gossip originate and grow in this same way? At first it 
has a meager basis in truth, but, as it passes from person to 
person, it is touched up and rounded out into beautiful (?) 
symmetry until it has become incredibly different from its 
simple origin. 

Applications. — What practical consequence does this 
psychology of illusion carry? In the first place it should 
do away with our ^^ cocksureness.'^ Infallibility is not among 
human probabilities. Even the surest testimony regard- 
ing incidents supposed to have occurred, or regarding the 



46 Human Conduct 

personal identity of a prisoner, has been proven mistaken. 
A recollection of the liability of all of us to error should make 
us pause and reconsider. 

In the second place it should make us careful in our ob- 
servations. We should recognize our tendency to project 
something foreign into the situation, and look again to verify 
its presence. Or rather we would do well to look again to 
see whether what we tend to put there is not absent; that is, 
look to disprove our wishes — a hard thing for most of us 
to do. This is even more important in non-physical mat- 
ters than in physical. Before you take what some one has 
said of you as an insult you can afford to consider it again to 
see whether you have not, out of your own prejudice, pro- 
jected the offensive element into it. Before you take a 
word or a sentence to be a slur on yourself or others, 
make sure that you have heard it rightly, and before 
you pass on a slander be careful that you have not added 
a touch unconsciously to round it out into symmetry, for 
it is thus that slanders grow. Before you react on a 
vital speech, book, or doctrine, either to accept and apply 
it or to spurn it, consider it again — if possible from a new 
angle — lest you should have thrust into it a meaning 
concocted in your own imagination instead of finding its 
real essence. For prone indeed is the mind to outrun 
itself. 

And finally it should make us charitable towards others. 
If others distort the facts so that we can not agree with them, 
we should remember that we also distort facts so that they 
can not agree with us. And yet each does it sincerely. 
There is a vast difference between a lie and an error. Too 
many of us lie, but all of us are subject to error, for we all 
see our world with a bias. We are therefore called upon 
to temper our own sureness, which we can do without sac- 
rificing our self-respect ; to guard against being carried away 
by the hasty conclusions of our friend, which we can do with- 



How our Senses Deceive us — Illusions 47 

out withdrawing our friendship for him ; and to recollect 
that the apparently unwarranted attitudes of others are^ 
not due either to insincerity or to culpable stupidity, which 
we can do without giving up our disagreement with them. 

EXERCISES 

1. A college professor, who takes advantage of end-of-the- 
season bargains, read a newspaper headline as "Good Hats a 
Quarter" when it really said "God Hates a Quitter." Explain. 

2. Do you recall having had any illusions to-day? If not ob- 
serve yourself for fleeting ones during the next half hour. 

3. How do you decide whether an experience was an hallucina- 
tion, an illusion, or a true perception? 

4. Why do witnesses often give contradictory testimony? 

5. What is the effect of suggestion upon one's manner of ob- 
serving or of describing a situation? Why are court witnesses 
not allowed to hear each other's testimony? 

6. Do you see how a knowledge of the psychology of illusion 
might help one to guard against it ? Could it completely overcome 
one's liability to illusion? 



CHAPTER IV 

APPERCEPTION AND TACT 

Tact vs. Talent. — Talent is something, but tact is everything. 
Talent is serious, sober, grave, and respectable; tact is all that, 
and more too. It is not a sixth sense, but it is the life of all the 
five. It is the open eye, the quick ear, the judging taste, the keen 
smell, and the lively touch. . . . Talent is power, tact is skill ; 
talent is weight, tact is momentum ; talent knows what to do, tact 
knoAvs how to do it ; talent makes a man respectable, tact will make 
him respected ; talent is wealth, tact is ready money. For all the 
practical purposes, tact carries it against talent ten to one. 

Take them to the theater, and put them against each other on 
the stage, and talent shall produce you a tragedy that shall scarcely 
live long enough to be condemned, while tact keeps the house in a 
roar, night after night, with its successful farces. . . . Take them 
to the bar, and let them shake their learned curls at each other in 
legal rivalry ; talent sees its way clearly, but tact is first at its 
journey's end. Talent has many a compliment from the bench, 
but tact touches fees. Talent makes the world wonder that it 
gets on no faster, tact arouses astonishment that it gets on so 
fast. And the secret is, that it has no weight to carry ; it makes 
no false steps ; it hits the right nail on the head ; it loses no time ; 
it takes all hints ; and by keeping its eye on the weathercock, is 
ready to take advantage of every wind that blows. 

Take them into the church : . . . Talent convinces, tact 
converts. . . . Take them to court : talent feels its weight, tact 
finds its way ; talent commands, tact is obeyed ; . . . Place 
them in the senate : talent has the ear of the house, but tact wins 
its heart, and has its votes ; . . . Tact seems to know every- 
thing, without learning anything; ... it never ranks in the 
awkward squad ; it has no left hand, no deaf ear, no blind side. 
It puts on no look of wondrous wisdom, it has no air of profundity, 
but plays with the details of place as dexterously as a well-taught 
hand flourishes over the keys of the pianoforte, i 

1 London Atlas. 

48 



Apperception and Tact 49 

Viola^s commendation of the fool in Shakespeare^s '' Twelfth 
Night ^^ touches upon the heart of tact : 

This fellow's wise enough to play the fool ; 

And to do that well craves a kind of wit : 

He must observe their mood on whom he jests, 

The quality of persons, and the time. 

Not, like the braggard, check at every feather 

That comes before his eye. This is a practice 

As full of labor as a wise man's art. 

Nature of tact. — ^' Observe their mood . . . , the quality 
of persons, and the time ^^ — this is the secret of tact. 
The blunderer blurts out his proposition with no other 
consideration than the content of his message viewed from 
his own standpoint. He merely throws it at his hearer. 
The diplomat, on the other hand, adapts his message to the 
circumstances which obtain in this particular case. He 
speaks not to abstractions but to men in the concrete — 
to men closed up on certain sides by moods and prejudices, 
but wide open and receptive on other sides. It was, you 
remember, by this adaptability that Paul, the great apostle 
to many different races and nationalities of men, sought 
success. 

For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself 
servant unto all, that I might gain the more. And unto the 
Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them 
that are under the law as under the law, that I might gain them 
that are under the law ; to them that are without law as without 
law . . . that I might gain them that are without law. To the 
weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak : I am made 
all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. . 

Moody and Lincoln and Socrates could adapt themselves 
to all sorts of conditions, and Jesus was preeminently able 
to make himself at home in any kind of company, no matter 
of what social class. 

Two ways of being tactful. — But there are two ways to 
thus ^'observe their mood . . ., the quality of persons, and 



50 Human Conduct 

the time/^ On the one hand, by feehng around, one as- 
certains the viewpoint of his companion and docilely agrees 
with him. He acquiesces in whatever opinion his partner 
of the moment may chance to express. Now he is on one 
side of the fence, now on the other. He praises or ^^ knocks ^^ 
a mutual acquaintance, thinks it is going to rain or is going 
to clear up, is religious or irreligious, radical or conservative, 
or whatever else the mood of his companion may require. 
Such pliable bipeds we all know. They are extremely 
affable — for the moment. But in the long run they are 
— disgusting. 

But, on the other hand, there is a more constructive way 
of being tactful. It is entirely possible to '^ Observe their 
mood . . ., the quality of persons, and the time '^ and yet 
not drift, but work successfully toward a goal. A person 
who wishes to be thus aggressively tactful instead of pas- 
sively so does not seek to know his partner^s mental state 
merely that he may align himself with it, but that he may 
begin with it as it is and gradually remold it into that which 
he wishes it to be — that he may take it as a foundation 
upon which to build the substantial structure which he 
himself intends. His method thus is plastic, but his end is 
dynamic, purposeful, constructive. 
A Interest as conditions of constructive tact. — Now in 
this effort one must observe two conditions set by the laws 
of apperception. The first is to secure interest. Until one 
has got this it is useless to argue. What one says merely 
glances harmlessly off one^s victim. For you remember 
our conclusion of earlier chapters that what the mind gets 
it must reach out after from within. There is no possible 
way by which one can force anything whatever upon the 
mind. When its interests point in one direction no merely 
external presentation in another direction can get itself 
heard. Unless the mind itself sees fit to turn to it and wel- 
come it in, it knocks in vain. In proof of this you need only 



Apperception and Tact 51 

recall those moments — which every one has experienced — 
when your attention was so firmly riveted upon some mat- 
ter that even such strong stimuli as intense pain went un- 
noticed. They could not get into consciousness because it 
refused to be focused upon them. And when they did find 
an entrance, it was not merely because they were there but 
because your mind felt it worth while to reach out and take 
them in. He who would really reach a person must, there- 
fore, somehow first get into the current of his interests. 

And if he can do this he need have no fear that the per- 
son with whom he is working will remain passive. There 
really is no such thing as lethargy of mind. Persons who 
are indifferent to what is going on about them, men who are 
inattentive to a speech, pupils who are unconcerned about 
their lessons, are mentally active enough, but their activity 
is turned in some other direction than the one desired. One's 
mind is, in every waking moment, reaching out to learn 
something or other. It is always drawn up around some 
focus and, at that focus, is eagerly active in assimilating 
new experience. No one is mentally inert. Mind is always 
active, always dynamic, always reaching out its apperceptive 
tentacles for some material or other. Matter that succeeds 
in getting into this field upon which its searchlight is turned 
is triumphantly captured. That which stands outside of 
this field goes begging, however worth while it may be in 
itself. Such would be the fate of a teacher's presentation 
of an algebra lesson, or of an agent's effort to sell a book, 
when the intended victim's intellectual mouth was set for 
baseball stuff. Evidently the first thing to do is to get 
into the range of the victim's mental appetite.^ 

Reconciling interest with purpose. — Here, then, is our 
diplomat's difficulty. He may not merely shove in his 

^ This is the psychological basis for that first step in instruction which 
the Herbartians call "Preparation" — that is, putting the pupil in the right 
frame of mind. 



52 Human Conduct 

stuff upon a mind that is not reaching out his way. Yet 
he may not merely abandon his position and drift with the 
interests of his auditor, for that would get him nowhere. 
He wishes to gain an end — to do a bit of constructive work 
— to induce his hearer to think and act in a certain way. 
Evidently his only solution can be to get the master of the 
hunt, going on from inside the victim's skull, to turn his 
search spontaneously in our tactful man's direction. To drop 
figures, he must stimulate the mind to reach out for what 
he intends to present. He must, by question, by suggestion, 
by collateral information, remold the ^' apperception mass '' 
of his auditor so that it will focus upon his material. You 
have seen such cautious approaches. The man in control 
began to talk about the thing in which you were then inter- 
ested. Gradually he shifted from this to other matter 
nearer his point. As he went on he slowly filled up your 
mind with his own topic, and thus excluded all other topics, 
until your mind got to eagerly working in that direction, 
and you got actually hungry for more information along 
the same line. Then, in satisfaction of your own appetite, 
he presented his point. He was, you see, a practical psychol- 
ogist. For he realized that to get a thing you must apper- 
ceive it, but that to apperceive it you must somehow be made 
to reach out for it from within. And nevertheless he had 
found a way of obeying this law of apperception, and yet 
doing a constructive bit of work. Such procedure psychol- 
ogists have called by various names — creating interest, 
stimulating curiosity, rendering explicit a desired apper- 
ceptive system — but wliatever it may be called it is always 
the same thing — building up what one already knows in 
such a way that the voracious hunger of the ^^ apperception 
mass '' may be concentrated upon some intended prey. 

Doctrine of interest in pedagogy, — This doctrine, that all 
materials should be presented in satisfaction of a mental 
appetite on the part of the hearer, is the doctrine of inter- 



Apperception and Tact 53 

estj about which so much has been heard in pedagogy during 
the last two decades, though the rest of us can advantageously 
use it as well as teachers. Frequently it has been consid- 
ered a flabby doctrine, and has been derisively called ^^ soft 
pedagogy." But it is as hard-headed as any other sort of 
solid sense. It does not mean that one should drift with 
the whims of his auditors. One can conform to it and still 
do a thoroughly constructive work. For one first conceives 
a purpose, then begins to mold the ^^ apperception mass " 
of his hearers, which is in itself capable of many different 
^' sets," in such a way as to concentrate upon the desired 
data its ever active search for new materials to assimilate, 
and thus builds towards the realization of that overshadow- 
ing purpose. A presentation can hitch up with the interests 
of one^s auditors and yet be constructive. Indeed this is 
the only way in which constructive work can be done, for 
bricks that are merely thrown aimlessly at a wall will most 
likely not settle into their proper places, but fall as broken 
fragments upon the ground ; and thoughts that are unpsycho- 
logically hurled at men, however good they may be in them- 
selves, will almost surely fall as empty jargon upon closed 
senses. Whether one is teacher or speaker or private advo- 
cate he dare not despise the interests of his hearers, for inter- 
est is not shallow and capricious, but, as Professor Dewey 
says, ^^ a moving thing, a thing of growth, of richer experi- 
ence, and fuller power." 

Articulating new with old. — But the second thing which 
the tactful man must observe is so to present his ma- 
terials as to make them ^^ hitch up " with the experi- 
ence of the hearer. He must speak, that is, on his hearers^ 
own level and from their own viewpoint. Unless, so to 
speak, they can step into his shoes he can not touch them. 
No matter how carefully the mental appetite may have 
been whetted, by the advance preparation discussed above, 
if the promised food when presented can not be masticated, 



54 Human Conduct 

satisfaction will not long be sought from it. The ever 
hungry mind will at once turn elsewhere to appease its 
craving. Or, to change the figure, the mind must reach out 
and grasp what it gets, and it can not reach over a chasm. 
One builds up one^s mental possessions step by step. What 
is to be got must each time be the next element to what 
one has. For this whole doctrine of apperception is that 
each new presentation must be understood in the light of 
the past, and if that past is not sufficient to make the present 
situation intelligible, this situation must be so simpKfied 
that it becomes continuous with that past. People can not 
take in what is ^'over their heads, '^ and they will not long 
continue to try to do so. You know how soon you lose 
interest in a book which you do not understand, and how 
quickly your thoughts go ^^ woolgathering ^^ when you can no 
longer follow the argument of a speaker. 

Difficulty of conforming to this requirement. — It is, how- 
ever, no simple matter to conform to this psychological 
exhortation. Even with a single individual it is difficult 
enough, for it is hard to see just what his viewpoint is. Sales- 
men who attempt to adjust their conversation to the level 
of their patrons, or who undertake to select books or music 
for them, often make the most embarrassing miscalculations. 
But it is far more difficult to obey this pedagogical law of 
knitting the new to the old when one is dealing with a group, 
as the teacher and the public speaker are. For then one 
must hitch up with traits which all the members of the 
group alike possess. But people differ so widely in interests 
and abilities that they have surprisingly little in common. 
What interests one will bore a second ; what is too difficult 
for some will be too easy for others. Words that one would 
understand are unintelligible to another; the mental im- 
agery to which appeal must be made, — of which we shall 
later hear, — differs from man to man ; and the whole out- 
look upon life is as varied as the crowd is heterogeneous. 



Apperception and Tact 



55 



It is difficult to convince oneself how great the difference 
between persons in respect to the experience upon which a 
speaker may build really is. Students in Experimental 
Psychology sometimes measure this difference by making 
a list of the facts which all the members of a group know out 
of the whole number of facts presented. The percentage 
which they know in common always turns out amazingly 
small. I myself, in conducting this sort of experiment, 
submitted to a class of college students a list of an hundred 
words from which the following are taken : 



infusoria 


Les Miserables 


Millet 


ohm 


intaglio 


linotype 


mitosis 


parallax 


Kepler's Law 


logos 


morgen 


peneplain 


kilogram 


Malthus Law 


nada 


Pestalozzi 


IdnaBstlietics 


metacarpal 


natural selection 


Polonius 


kinetic 


midiron 


noi 


pomology 



In this list of one hundred words there were only eleven 
that no one out of the class of fifteen knew, and only two 
— base hit and clearing house — that everybody in the class 
knew. The others were known by approximately one to 
fourteen members and by an average of somewhat less than 
six. But the interesting feature was that no two words were 
known by exactly the same group. And yet these students 
were all in a college of liberal arts and had much more in 
common than, for instance, a group at a church or political 
meeting. How difficult it is to present materials that are 
worth while and yet within the apperceptive grasp of such 
a group, may easily be seen. The usual manner of meeting 
this situation in the schools is by such a system of grading 
as will make the class of as nearly equal ability and uniformity 
of interest as possible, and by supplementing the class teach- 
ing with individual instruction. In speech-making, unfortu- 
nately, the conventional way is too often to utter a flood of 
gush that has much sound and little meaning, and that hence 
strains nobody^s apperceptive muscles, as you will readily see 



56 Human Conduct 

if you will consider how little content there is to the popular 
addresses which you have heard. Yet constructive work, 
which still conforms to the psychology of apperception, can 
be done, but it requires tact and serious thought. 

The teacher, the preacher, the debater, the agent, who 
conforms to these two laws of apperception, who concerns 
himself first to arouse the curiosity of his hearers and then 
presents his material on their level — in such a way that 
they can readily understand it — will be successful. He 
who neglects these psychological laws will inevitably fail. 

Length of a work period. — You see, then, that for one 
to get properly at a problem takes considerable prepa- 
ration. One^s whole mental make-up must reorganize 
itself about this problem before one can adequately ap- 
perceive it. If one is not to think merely superficially 
he can not afford to be constantly flitting from one 
problem to another. To do so will inevitably make his 
dealings with all of them flabby. He must stay with one 
mental job until he has accomplished it. For when the 
'^ apperception mass '^ begins to accumulate about a certain 
focus it takes a little time for it to acquire its full working 
power. When one first sits down to a task one's mind seems 
scattered and ineffectual ; the organization of consciousness 
is comparatively loose and its focus blunt. But, with a 
little time, it piles up into one dominant wave and centers 
all of its energy in this onward moving momentum. One 
gets completely immersed in his subject and works with 
maximum efficiency. Later, as fatigue begins to work its 
effect, this towering wave begins to disintegrate and con- 
sciousness must again sink almost to a dead level or be piled 
up in some other way. Careful investigation has thus 
shown that the best part of a school day is not its first period, 
nor the best part of a period its first moments. It takes 
a little time to get down to fruitful work so that, in each 
case, the optimum part is some one third of the distance on 




Apperception and Tact 57 

from the beginning. If we represent the effectiveness with 
which one can work at different parts of a school day by a 
curve, rising as the effectiveness rises and falhng as it falls, 
that curve would be some- 
thing like the following, 
the dividing line represent- 
ing the noon intermission : 

Teachers take advan- ^ig, 17. 

tage of this fact by putting 

the hardest studies in their program at the time of day when 
energy is at its best. But in another way too it can be made 
use of. For the same law holds also of single study periods. 
Here too it takes some time to get into the condition necessary 
for effective work. Here too fatigue lessens one's efficiency 
after too long .a time. There is, therefore, a best length 
of time to stay by a given task. On the one hand it is un- 
economical to flit hastily from one mental task to another. 
If one is to do his best work he must set aside a com- 
paratively long period for a specific task, and, within that 
period, be undisturbed. No one can effectively study a 
lesson or read a book in snatches. No one can write a paper 
worth while a page at a sitting, nor can anyone do effective 
mental work of any kind whose attention is, from time to 
time, called away from that task. Each time one comes 
back to that task only to find his apperceptive laborers scat- 
tered, and must take too much time and energy in reassem- 
bling and reorganizing them. On the other hand, one can 
stay too long by the same piece of work. For after an hour 
or two — and in many cases in half of that time — fatigue 
has so benumbed one's mental faculties that he can no longer 
do effective work. Under those conditions it is wasted time 
to stay longer with that task. One will gain more by turn- 
ing to some very different kind of work, which will call for 
the exercise of quite different faculties, and come back to 
the first only after the powers taxed have had sufficient time 



58 



Human Conduct 



to recuperate. Jack London tells of how he at first wrote 
long hours every day — sometimes even fifteen or eighteen 
hours continuously. But the work that he produced was 
• wooden, and no publishers would accept it. Later he 
wrote for only a short period each day, but during that 
period was always fresh. In the writing of his major books 
and articles he made it a rule always to write only one thou- 
sand words a day — no more and no less. Thus he was 
deliberately adjusting the length of the period through 

which he stayed by a certain 
kind of work to that which fa- 
vored maximum efficiency.^ 

Apperception and stupidity. 
— Difficulty in first approach 
to problems. — Apperception 
also explains away much ap- 
parent stupidity. Look in the 
accompanying picture for two 
frogs. You will probably have 
some difficulty at first in find- 
ing them, but when you have 
once found them they stand out 
ever afterwards in clear out- 
line. You can thereafter so 
easily find them because you have in mind a preperception 
of them. But another to whom you show the pictures 
may not have that preperception and, forgetting your initial 
difficulty and thinking only of their present clearness to you, 
you fail to understand why he finds the matter difficult. 
Just so it is with purely intellectual affairs. It is hard for 
us to appreciate the difficulties of others. However baffling 
the situation may have been to us when we first met it, after 
we have once seen through it it appears so simple that we 
can not see how it should afford difficulty to any one. A 

1 John Barleycorn. 




Fig. 18. 
Copied from Starch's Experiments 
in Educational Psychology, by 
permission of the Century Com- 
pany, by whom it was originally 
pubHshed. 



Apperception and Tact 59 

teacher who has worked through a problem and mastered 
it is tempted to lose patience with a pupil who can not do a 
sum so simple. A man who has cleared up for himself a 
certain viewpoint becomes disgusted with the obtuseness 
of those who can not see its evident truth. After every in- 
vention men have said '^ Why, that is easy ; why didn't I do 
that ? '^ In the history of philosophy men floundered for cen- 
turies for the simplest truths. It took the Greeks two centu- 
ries to distinguish between mind and matter, and decades to 
develop anything like a complete form of the drama, — 
matters which come as the simplest of facts. But they are 
simple merely for the same reason that the frogs are easily 
found when we once have seen their outline — namely, be- 
cause a definite way of looking at these things and talking 
about them has been handed down to us from our fathers. 

A teacher^s impatience. — I have seen many a teacher's 
efficiency crippled by this very fact — that she could not sym- 
pathize with her pupil's difficulties. If they could not at 
once get the point she put them down as stupid. To her, 
because she had been through it, it was perfectly plain and 
a few general comments grudgingly thrown at her wards — 
and these mostly above their heads — she thought more 
than enough to explain the matter to any dunce. A seventh- 
grade boy was once sent to me, by a young teacher, for 
punishment because he " would not " learn a certain selec- 
tion from the ^' Vision of Sir Launfal." He complained that 
he could not learn it because he could not understand it. 
Upon examining the passage I found it intelligible enough 
to a scholar but really difficult for a twelve-year-old. After 
I had explained it to him word by word he understood it 
and then easily memorized it. When I protested to his 
teacher her only comment was that the selection was so easy 
that it did not require any explanation. It would be an 
excellent corrective to the pedantry of such a person if these 
supposed ^^ dunces " were to ask her to find a concealed pic- 



6o Human Conduct 

ture which they had already found, or solve a puzzle to which 
they knew the solution, or if they were to try to explain to 
her the construction of a machine which they knew and she 
did not. Measured by her own standard it would then be 
her turn to appear the simpleton. 

Must point out what we wish to have seen. — Salesmen, 
under the pressure of economic necessity, have always acted 
on the principle here involved. They have not presumed 
that their intended customer would himself find the merits 
of their goods, but have themselves pointed them out. An 
agent will direct attention to the simplest features about 
his book or his machine, and the surprising fact is that these 
seem to come into existence just when he points them out. 
Otherwise they would likely be overlooked, however prom- 
inent they may be to one who already knows them. 
You should follow his example. The details, or the type of 
organization, which you would have one see in a picture, 
or the merits to be observed in music, you should take the 
pains to point out. The matter which you are attempting 
to explain you should remember is not as clear to your hearer 
as it is to you, and you should not be impatient about going 
over it in minutest detail. The outlook that to you is 
so perspicuous and sensible you should recollect may be as 
much a meaningless chaos to your fellow as the picture 
above was mere daub to you before you approached it with 
its outline in mind, and you should not expect him to catch 
it until you have explained it to him as to a little child. 

And this is not because your fellow is more stupid than 
yourself. It merely indicates that you must stand ready 
to treat every situation which is new to your hearer in a way 
analogous to that in which you could help a novice to find 
the frogs — by condescending to trace in detail their outlines. 
After he has once formed, as you already have, a prepercep- 
tion of them he can see through them as readily as you now 
do, but before that time he can not; be expected to do so. 



Apperception and Tact 6i 

EXERCISES 

1. Cite cases which have come to your notice of success due to 
tact, and of blunders due to its absence. 

2. Someone has said that tact is polished lying. To what 
extent is that true ? 

3. Give examples, from your own experience or from that of 
others, of the successful use of tact in the following situations : 

(a) The delivery of an unwelcome message. 

(&) Securing a contribution from a "hard case." 

(c) Convincing someone of the value of a proposal to which 

he had been hostile. 
{d) Administering a reprimand. 

4. Does the tactful man make enemies ? Why ? 

5. Suppose you were to give a talk to the sixth grade on pupil 
government, urging them to adopt a "school city." Plan how you 
would go about it. 

6. How much knowledge and interest do the boys of your age 
in your Sunday school class have in common ? 

7. What do you find to be the effect of using a very short period 
for study ? A very long one ? What length seems best for you ? 

8. Have you ever experienced a case in which you overlooked 
many important facts until they had been pointed out to you? 
A case in which others seemed stupidly ignorant of facts, obvious 
to you, until you had specifically pointed them out? What lesson 
should this teach? 

9. Show how a teacher should prepare her class for the proper 
reception of the lesson. 



CHAPTER V 

RACE APPERCEPTION — KEEPING OPEN- 
MINDED TOWARD PROGRESS 

Tendency to preserve bias. — Bias in the individual, — Eti- 
quette has long ago decreed that a man shall, as far as 
possible, lay aside his profession when he leaves his workshop 
or office and goes out among his fellows in a social way. But 
unfortunately most of us are unable to do this. On the 
slightest occasion we tend to slip back into our business out- 
look. The preacher, the physician, the teacher, must con- 
tinually guard against ^^ talking shop.^^ All day long he has 
maintained a certain way of apperceiving life's activities and 
back into this outlook it is as easy for him to fall as for a body 
to drop from unstable to stable equilibrium. Our usual mode 
of apperceiving becomes a rut out of which it is difficult to 
stay. In spite of ourselves we can scarcely, avoid seeing 
the'world from only a single angle when we have once become 
accustomed to that angle. 

And yet there are many checks to this domination of a 
single '' apperceptive system '' in any one individual. 
Coming in contact with men who have a different outlook, 
as such a one does, his own apperception can scarcely help 
being modified thereby. The fact, at least, that there are 
other ways of looking at the world is constantly thrust upon 
him. This frequent contact with one's fellows inevitabl}^ 
serves as a certain antidote to narrowmindedness. 

Bias in the group. — But the danger of stagnation is 
greater where the fixed mode of apperceiving belongs to a 
compact group than where it is only of the individual. For 

62 



Race Apperception 63 

where a group has a certain attitude in common this check to 
one-sidedness is less effective. One is disposed then to hunt 
out the members of his group and fraternize with them, in- 
stead of having his bias corrected by rubbing up against men 
of different outlook. Thus, instead of being broadened by 
his association, he is confirmed and strengthened in his 
narrow mode of apperceiving the situation in question. 
And so the bias of the closed group tends to grow continually 
by cumulation until the members of the group lose sympathy 
absolutely with those outside of its own bounds. Thus the 
Democrats, or the Socialists, or the Anarchists, or the 
members of a certain religious sect, get together and reiterate 
to each other their common views until their mode of apper- 
ceiving the problem becomes so predominant in their minds 
that they can not conceive how any one could sincerely look 
upon it in any other way. 

Such group bias is inevitable. When all with whom we 
associate think in a certain way they exert a tremendous force 
upon us to draw us into the same outlook. By their looks 
of approval or disapproval, by their suggestions, or by their 
arguments they coax, bump, pull, and twist our ^' apper- 
ception mass ^' until at length it settles into such equilibrium 
as is in harmony with theirs. And then, of course, since one's 
mental attitude is so large a factor in determining what one 
shall find, we see as they do. 

And yet even such group is not without complementary 
suggestions. For the members of no such group are so 
isolated that they come in touch with no one who has a 
different viewpoint. That there are other ways of regarding 
the situation in question is, from time to time, thrust upon 
them by inevitable contact with men outside their own class. 
This fact can scarcely help tempering, in some degree, their 
onesidedness. 

Bias in the age. — But when a mode of apperceiving a 
situation is characteristic of an age, rather than of one out 



64 •Human Conduct 

of many contemporary groups, the difficulty of avoiding 
stagnation is far greater. For here the check to one-sided- 
ness is most feeble. In fact such check is then almost 
entirely absent. The whole tendency is centripetal — 
toward the center. All have inherited from their ancestors 
the same outlook, by their mutual association they all 
confirm in each other this outlook, and together they transmit 
it as an inflexible heritage to posterity. Thus the whole 
social fabric weighs down upon any tendency to change. 
From the dawn of life to its close wherever one walks, with 
whomever he talks, whatever he reads or hears, all pelt 
away at his ^' apperception mass ^^ to batter it into the con-» 
ventional mold. If, as Professor James says, '' Old fogyism 
is the inevitable terminus toward which life sweeps us on '^ 
as individuals, much more so is racial old fogyism the goal 
toward which time drives on society. A Chinese stagnation 
is not an exceptional tendency — a caprice of the Oriental 
nations. It is the normal drift of all nations, and from it 
a small minority has, in all progressive countries, saved us 
at the cost of infinite suffering and self-sacrifice. 

Conservatism of society. — The masses always drag back 
toward the common center. They not only can not them- 
selves spontaneously change their outlook — shift them- 
selves to a new angle of apperception — but they try to 
restrain the individuals in their group who have the freshness 
and the daring left to venture it. Emerson says : 

Society is everywhere in conspiracy against the manhood of 
every one of its members. Society is a joint stock company, in 
which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to 
each shareholder, to surrender the hberty and culture of the eater. 
The virtue in most request is conformity. It loves not realities and 
creators, but names and customs. 

That outspoken German individualist, Nietzsche, protesting 
against this inertia of society against moving out of its rut, 
distinguishes between the good man — the man who merely 



Race Apperception 65 

preserves the already formulated institutions of society — 
and the hero — the man who hfts society to a higher plane. 
He says : 

The noble one wisheth to create something new and a new virtue. 
The good one willeth that old things should be preserved. 

And this noble one — this herb — he cautions : 

Thou eompellest many to relearn about thee ; that is sternly set 
down unto thine account by them. 

And so it happens that very few — only the most courageous 
of men — can continue to cling to their ideals of changing 
and thus bettering social institutions. * Says this philosopher 
again, 

I also have known noble ones who lost their highest hope. 
And then they slandered all high hopes. . . . Once they thought 
of becoming heroes ; men of pleasure they are now. A hero is a 
grief and a horror to them. 

Conservatism due to apperception. — But it is easy to be 
too severe on the conservative elements of society. Their 
stagnation does not necessarily arise out of intellectual and 
moral indolence. Conservatism comes rather as an in- 
evitable result of the law of apperception which we have been 
studying. It is in consequence of the fact that our minds 
tend to settle into accustomed '' apperceptive systems/^ and 
that these apperceptive systems replace rival ones, shutting 
us up to conventional viewpoints, and making it impossible 
to see matters from any new angle. How this works a 
few illustrations will make clear. 

I am acquainted with an old professor of Philosophy 
who sees in every question put to him some already familiar 
purport. No matter what the inquiry is he takes out of it 
the meaning of some question asked him many times before, 
and runs off the same answer as he has been in the habit of 
giving. It is needless to say that in this he distorts the 
sense of the inquiry in such a way that he does not answer 



66 Human Conduct 

at all the question actually asked. Now why is this? It is 
simply because he has passed the age of mental freshness and 
originality, and his mind is able to take on only certain 
already developed '' sets/^ Every question throws him 
into one or another of these fixed attitudes and he replies 
accordingly. His modes of apperception are crystallized 
in such a way that justice can not be done to any new 
problem. He can see in the new only such old meanings 
as his mind, in its spontaneous stage, has been organized 
to find. 

The Jews persecuted Jesus because they apperceived in 
his teachings impiety. Their modes of religious thought had 
become crystallized, so that any mention of religious matters 
threw them into a certain clear-cut and unambiguous atti- 
tude. Whenever they turned to think of religious problems 
their ^' apperception mass ^' gathered about the appropriate 
focus in the long accustomed way, and they could hence find 
in the matter only the old meanings. They could not fit 
together their knowledge of religious affairs in such a way as 
to function in any but the old direction. And so, in this 
case, they could not shift their viewpoint in such a way as 
to grasp the fuller purport that the Master was endeavoring 
to set forth. And looking in the situation only for the old, 
they found some of its usual elements absent without finding 
the compensation that the newer and truer synthesis would 
have involved. In consequence they failed to appreciate 
his message just because they could not recast that inner, 
subjective factor which is half of every truth. 

All-pervasiveness of this inertia. — Every reform that you 
can name has been subject to just this sort of thing. It 
has been seen either as something old or has not been seen 
at all, and yet the self-righteous old conservative, assuming 
a patronizing air toward the reformer and a sarcastic smile, 
has reckoned his own stupidity as poise and astuteness. So 
easy is it for the mind to drop back into its old mold ; so 



Race Apperception 67 

hard to gather itself into a new ! To do the latter requires 
effort, and effort, especially psychological effort, we do not 
make unless we must. 

How pronounced is the tendency to cling to established 
conventions the slightest consideration will show. Valuable 
new inventions have been treated either with indifference 
or with open hostility. The steamboat, the telegraph, 
and the telephone were indulgently smiled at as toys. The 
linotype, the harvesting machine, and the power loom were 
the occasion of many riots in which numbers of each were 
destroyed in the interests of preserving the old methods. In 
politics the principle of popular government and the equality 
of all persons came slowly with prolonged agitation. In 
science the new discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, and others 
won their way against strenuous opposition. In education 
progress has been persistently opposed, not only by those 
outside of its sphere, but even by parents and pupils who were 
in a position to feel most directly the value of the newer 
methods. In religion Protestantism had a long and fierce 
battle for recognition, while the present readjustment is 
meeting with no less — though somewhat different — an- 
tagonism. Surely the way of the reformer is hard. 

Conservatism among primitive men. — In earlier days re- 
sistance to change was even greater. The primitive man 
had never thought of any further justification of his practices 
than ^^ It is our custom. ^^ Indeed so impossible was it for 
him to look at a question in any other than the old ways, that 
he thought it absurd to ask for any further justification. 
Travelers among such primitive people tell us that if they 
ventured to press the question '^ why '^ the savages only 
laughed at them as fools. ^^ Our fathers did it and we do it ^' 
was enough for them. To such an extent was he carried on 
by the momentum of the past that the savage not only 
sought no new methods, but refused to adopt these when 
shown to him. 



68 Human Conduct 

Fire sticks were used in the ceremony of circumcision after stone 
implements became known. ... A Hottentot priest would use 
a sharp splint of quartz rather than a sharp knife in sacrificing an 
animal, or in performing circumcision. Tylor relates that the 
Dyacks of Borneo, when shown a more efficient manner of chopping 
wood with a V-shaped cut, not only refused to adopt it, although 
admitting its advantage, but fixed a fine upon anyone who should 
employ the new method. Everything not sanctioned by custom 
was taboo, and the only crime in primitive society is transgres- 
sion of custom, the normal consequence of which is death or ex- 
clusion from the tribe. ^ 

Conservatism an instinct. — The all pervasiveness of this 
resistance to change, and particularly the fact that it seems 
to become stronger as you go back through history, suggests 
that it may have an even deeper basis than the psychological 
one outlined above. And so it has. Ultimately it rests 
upon a biological basis. Even the fixed habits of apper- 
ception, to which above we attributed intellectual stagnation, 
are no mere accident. There is a reason why our ^^ apper- 
ception mass ^^ is more disposed to settle into the old mold, 
and thus commit us to a single outlook. And the reason is 
the same as that which holds us to the beaten path even in 
mechanical action as well as in thought. This ultimate 
reason is to be found in instinct, worked out by nature to meet 
the conditions of a lower existence, and still clinging to us 
as a relic of that early stage. 

Value of conservatism among lower animals. — Much 
that we do is to be explained by going back to the earlier 
forms of life out of which man has sprung. Thus we are 
afraid in the dark, we grit our teeth when angry, we faint 
when very much shocked, etc., not because these acts are 
now reasonable, but because we have inherited them from 
simpler forms of life where they really were useful. And if 
we are now to understand them properly we must go back 
to their origin and study them there — among the savages 

^ Ames' Psychology of Religious Experience, pp. 5, 6, aad 61. 



Race Apperception 69 

or even among the lower animals. And so we must with this 
instinct of resistance to change. It goes back far beyond 
civilized man for its start. It does not begin even with the 
savage. In fact the further back you go the more pro- 
nounced it is. In the case of the lowest forms of life nature 
has so narrowed the activities of her creatures that they 
respond with machine-like regularity to stimuli. Given a 
certain excitant you can predict with mathematical accuracy 
the result. Thus if you put a drop of acid near an amoeba, 
you can know in advance exactly in what direction the little 
animalcule will move. Higher up there is somewhat more 
spontaneity, but the uniformity is always a predominant 
feature. The moth will fly back into the flame time after 
time, the deer will hunt repeatedly the old pathways, and the 
rabbit will seek again her former haunt, even to their own 
detriment. And yet nature has made no mistake in this. 
For, though fatal under certain artificial conditions, this 
uniformity is on the whole beneficial. Capricious departure 
from these regular modes of response would be even more 
fatal, for acting in a new way the creature would be extremely 
likely to fall into some death trap. And so, by the law of the 
survival of the fittest, these reactions have come to be selected 
as the best through long experience, and nature has wisely 
fixed them as deeply ingrained instincts and set up strong 
barriers against the creatures ^ deviating from them even in 
the smallest degree. 

Value in primitive society. — And as it is in animal life 
so it is in the life of primitive man. Departure from the 
old ways was dangerous. It tended to make the group less 
of a compact unit, and thus .weakened its power of defense 
against its enemies. Whoever ventured to depart from the 
conventions of the tribe threatened both his own safety and 
that of his people. The beaten path was safest ; and, where 
the struggle for existence was so intense as it was in savage 
life, nature could tolerate only the safest. It was, therefore, 



70 Human Conduct 

as a matter of necessity in both subhuman and human forms 
that this instinct of conservatism was developed — an 
instinct so strong and clear-cut that the whole group would 
turn upon the members who departed from custom and ruth- 
lessly destroy them. It is a survival of this old instinct that 
still makes us pause, with a certain palpitation of the heart, 
when we depart even a little from the beaten path. 

And so we should not complain about this instinctive dread 
of change. On the whole it has been absolutely necessary to 
the preservation of the race. And if it now retards progress 
it is only because it, in common with many other instincts, 
has overshot its mark — has persisted in a setting where it 
is no longer useful. Nature has given man the counter- 
power to overlay it and tone it down with reason. If he does 
not use this but permits himself to drift back on to the level 
of brute instinct, he only forfeits his right to be called a man. 

Emotion as sentinel. — But this is a recipe more easily 
given than obeyed. For where change is in question our 
emotions flood in and warp our judgment. There is nothing 
else that stirs us emotionally so certainly or so deeply as to 
face a vital readjustment. In fact nature gave us our emo- 
tions for this very purpose. Change was, in the lower forms 
of life, biologically so dangerous that nature was obliged to 
give us this ever alert sentinel to pound on our hearts in 
warning when we were tempted to venture into a new path- 
way, lest we should do it too lightly. If you will think for a 
moment you will notice that accustomed acts are performed 
without a tremor of emotion, no matter how consequential 
they really are. The trained hostler drives through an intri- 
cate maze as calmly as you walk through an open field. The 
trained chauffeur, the experienced general, the old public 
speaker, are strangers to nervousness. The man who is 
habitually generous, or habitually self-sacrificing, feels no 
emotion over an act of generosity or of self-sacrifice. He 
takes it as a matter of course. 



Race Apperception 71 

But, on the other hand, when we turn to anything new, 
our feehngs are all stirred up. When we first walk across a 
narrow footlog, or ride a bicycle, or drive a motor car, or make 
a speech, or perform some act of generosity or self-sacrifice, 
our whole inner anatomy seems rent with emotion. Nay, 
even when we turn to the most trivial matter, or undertake 
the most insignificant change in the manner of going at our 
work, a certain emotional tension grips us. For the old 
lines of conduct there are adequate channels already broken, 
and our energy flows unhindered through them, so that 
the whole act goes off almost mechanically, and involves no 
stirring of the soul. When, however, v/e undertake some 
new thing, the problem is very different. Here there are 
no channels already broken, and a* painful tension is neces- 
sary before such channels can be plowed. One's whole 
nature must be wrought up to high pitch to carry out effec- 
tively the unusual demand, and a sense of this unusual 
tension constitutes emotion. 

The prick of conscience. — Now it is this emotional stirring 
that makes men shun the new. It is painful. Biologically 
it is a danger sign, for it is an indication of that nook where 
disaster is so likely to lurk — an untried path. And alarmed 
by it men tend to sink back into the old routine, where they 
can drift quietly and with a complacent sense of safety. 
And it must be remembered that this emotional weight bears 
down as effectively upon new ways of thinking as upon new 
ways of acting. It opposes all change ; it sanctions all 
conservatism. The ^^ apperception mass '^ can slip back 
into its old type of organization with complacency. It can 
reshape itself into unaccustomed forms only with pain, 
and a certain disconcerting sense of restlessness. But most 
persons take the emotional complacence of the accustomed 
rut, when contrasted with the vague but startling restlessness 
of the new pathway, as rational conviction instead of the 
indolent persuasion which it really is. A certain pang of 



72 . Human Conduct 

conscience is always attached to the new departure ; which 
makes one feel somehow irreverent and disloyal in acceding 
to it. But every student of the problem knows that this 
prick of conscience is no indication whatever of the merits of 
the situation. It is an unrest that attaches to the new merely 
because it is new. It is felt no less by the former ^^ tough ^' 
when he first participates in the Lord^s Supper than it is by 
the '* tenderfoot '* at his initiation into the revels of the bar- 
room. The inertia is merely psychological or biological, and 
not logical or moral — the voice of the serpent lulling one into 
a disgraceful lethargy rather than the binding utterance of 
God. In explaining the conservatism of the vestry of St. 
John^s Church in ''The Inside of the Cup'' Churchill says : 

Most of them had an uncomfortable feeling that Hodder [the 
progressive pastor] was somehow right — a feeling which they 
sought to stifle when they reflected upon the consequences of facing 
it. For this would mean a disagreeable shaking up of their own 
lives. . . . They wished heartily that the new rector, who had 
developed this disquieting personality, would peacefully resign 
and leave them to the former, even tenor of their lives. . . . The 
trouble was that they could not continue to listen to him with 
comfort. 

Progress as duty. — New solutions for new problems. — But 
if a psychological inertia holds man to conservatism, an 
ethical obligation commits him to progress. Counter to 
this blind resistance to change there runs a rational interest 
in progress. In fact it is onward and upward that man's 
higher nature looks, instead of backward. 

. . . through the ages one increasing purpose runs. 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns. 

Indeed if either the individual or society is to be true to its 
function, it must be constantly advancing. Each generation 
receives from the preceding a bigger heritage upon which to 
build than its predecessor had. Even the same problems it 
would be expected to solve differently — and better. But 



Race Apperception 73 

it does not have the same problems. It has different and 
bigger ones which are only on the surface dupHcates of the 
ones with which the fathers dealt. And the old solutions 
can not be made adequately to stretch over these larger 
problems. We must stand in this age upon our own feet, 
just as our fathers in their age stood on their feet. We must 
face our problems squarely and deal with them on their own 
merits. Our unique tasks we must meet with unique solu- 
tions. That means, put psychologically, that we must free 
ourselves as much as possible from an inherited apperceptive 
bias, and shake our ^^ apperception mass ^^ into such a new 
equilibrium as is adequate to the new situation. W^e must 
therefore disregard the emotional resistance to facing fairly 
a new problem, spoken of above, and, as Browning says, 
^' Think, nor account the pain.^^ 

True loyalty. — We can not otherwise come up to the 
standards set by our fathers. The old Chinese had the feeling 
that to be true to their fathers they should be careful never 
to outdo them, but either do their work exactly as they did 
or a little short of as well. And even here in America we 
have all met persons who feel that it would be somehow 
irreverent to reformulate the creeds or to change the funda- 
mental institutions which our fathers built up, even though 
conditions have radically changed since their time. A better 
loyalty would be to try to understand their spirit and apply 
it to the present — to ask ourselves how, if they lived at 
this time and had available the wider knowledge of the 
present, they would have acted. If we are to be intelli- 
gently loyal to them, we can not do it by taking over their 
beliefs, practices, and institutions just as they left them. 
Our loyalty must take rather the form of appropriating their 
ideals, of imitating their faith and their courage, and of 
attacking our own larger problems in the same heroically 
independent spirit in which the best of them attacked 
theirs. 



74 Human Conduct 

Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime ; — 
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind 

their time ? 
Turn those tracks toward past or future, that make Plymouth Rock 

sublime? 

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, 

Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's ; 

But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us 

free. 
Hoarding it in mouldy parchments while our tender spirits flee 
The rude grasp of that great Impulse which sent them across the 

sea. 

New occasions teach new duties ; Time makes ancient good uncouth ; 
They must upAvard still and onward, who would keep abreast of 

Truth ; 
Lo, before us gleam her camp fires! We ourselves must pilgrims be. 
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate 

winter sea. 
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key. 

Need balance between progressivism and conservatism. — 
But if one is to take his place in promoting progress he must 
do more than estimate lightly the emotional drag against new 
methods of thinking and acting. It is not sufficient that he 
overcon>e his instinctive antipathy against change. For 
change in itself is in no sense superior to permanence. Indeed 
the established should have the preference unless there is a 
sufficient reason for modifying it. For all change is not 
necessarily progress. There is even more danger in excessive 
radicalism than there is in excessive conservatism. For 
ultra-conservatism can at most leave us where we were ; it 
can not well bring disaster. But radicalism may at any 
moment plunge us into irretrievable ruin. He, therefore, 
who would do his part as a thinking member of society must 
learn to be fair both to the old and the new. He must learn 
to apperceive in a balanced way both that to which he has 
become accustomed and the new propositions that each day 



Race Apperception 75 

brings forth. And to treat with fairness and with balance 
the problems of successive periods of time demands the same 
sort of self-discipline which we have seen that effective 
cooperation with one's fellows in any one period requires. 
One must be conscious of the fact that a situation changes 
in significance as it is apperceived from different viewpoints, 
and must deliberately cultivate the ability to shift from one 
of these viewpoints to another. He must, of course, seek the 
necessary information — including a sense of the trend of 
history — and, in addition, must strive for many-sidedness, 
for flexibility, for broad sympathy. 

But after all, while there have been men — like Rousseau 
and the French Encyclopedists — who could not apperceive 
sympathetically the institutions of the past and the present, 
yet, for reasons which we have now sufficiently developed, 
it is a far more difficult problem to be fair to what should be 
the institutions of the future. One must then, to be sure, 
squarely face the value of what we already have and build 
upon it, but one must also, if he is to be in fact what he is in 
name, — ^^ a rational animal,'' — seek to appreciate and 
further progress. 

If more would act the play of Life, 

And fewer spoil it in rehearsal ; 
If Bigotry would sheathe its knife 

Till good become more universal ; 
If Custom, gray with ages grown, 
Had fewer blind men to adore it — 
If Talent shone 
In Truth alone. 
The world would be the better for it. 

The chambered nautilus builds its shell in a spiral of 
successive chambers, always living in the last one. In an 
immortal poem, of which we quote the last three stanzas, 
Holmes sings its praise as the type of creature always ready 
to advance to a new and higher level : 



76 Human Conduct 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 

That spread its lustrous coil ; 

Still, as the spiral grew, 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door. 
Stretched in its last-found home, and knew the old no more. 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee. 

Child of the wandering sea. 

Cast from her lap, forlorn I 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 

While on mine ear it rings, 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings : — 

Build thee more stately mansions, my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll ! 

Leave thy low- vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free. 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea. 

So it is and must be always, my dear boys. If the angel Gabriel 
were to come down from heaven, and head a successful rise against 
the most abominable and unrighteous vested interests, which this 
poor old world groans under, he would most certainly lose his 
character for many years, probably for centuries, not only with 
upholders of said vested interests, but with the respectable mass 
of the people whom he had delivered. They wouldn't ask him to 
dinner, or let their names appear with his in the papers; they 
would be very careful how they spoke of him in the palaver, or at 
their clubs. What can we expect, then, when we have only poor 
gallant blundering men like Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mazzini, and 
righteous causes which do not triumph in their hands ; men who 
have holes enough in their armor, God knows, easy to be hit by 
respectabilities sitting in their lounging chairs, and ha\dng large 
balances at their bankers? But you are brave gallant boys, who 
hate easy chairs, and have no balances or bankers. You only 
want to have your heads set straight to take the right side; so 
bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine 
times out of ten in the wrong ; and that if you see a man or a boy 
striving on the weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering he 



Race Apperception 77 

may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him. If you 
can't join and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate remember 
that he has found something in the world which he will fight and 
suft'er for, which is just what you have got to do for yourselves ; 
and so think and speak of him tenderly. 

Hughes, in Tom Brown's School Days. 

EXERCISES 

1. A show window, displaying curiosities, contained a pair of 
shoes of the 1897 model, having extremely long and narrow toes, 
and beside them a pair of the 1882 model, with toes just as ab- 
normally broad. Both seemed appropriate in their own day, but 
both look ridiculous to-day. Why ? 

2. Are there fashions in thinking as well as in dressing ? Why? 

3. A prominent philosopher remarked that the fact that many 
persons hold a certain opinion is ground for distrusting it, and that 
the few men who differ from the masses are likely to be right. Is 
this true? Why? 

4. Does society ordinarily move forward spontaneously or 
does it wait at each step for a prophet? How does society treat 
these prophets? 

5. Are there unnamed prophets who deserve, but never — 
even after death — get, credit? What happens to the "near- 
prophet" — the one who advocates a cause that never wins? 
(See Mackenzie's *' Manual of Ethics," page 355.) 

6. Compare the social value of the radical progressive and the 
conservative. 

7. Is Nietzsche's distinction between the good man and the 
hero a correct one? 

8. Do you experience an uncomfortable feeling when a well-estab- 
lished convention is ruthlessly condemned in your presence ? Why ? 

9. After a reform do conditions remain on the level to which 
they have been raised, do they continue to advance, or do they 
tend to degenerate into artificiality ? Illustrate. 

10. Can you name any reform movements of the present which 
are opposed chiefly because men are unwilling to adjust themselves 
to a new order? 

11. Is the author correct in holding that we can be really loyal 
to our fathers only by sometimes setting aside their express di- 
rections (as in the case of political policies or of religious creeds) ? 

12. Do you believe that you are able to do justice to *' radical'* 
proposals ? 



CHAPTER VI 

HOW WE SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS — CONSCIOUS 
USE OF HYPOTHESES 

Employment of hypotheses demanded for effective prob- 
lem solving. — A famous hunter tells us that when a boy he 
once succeeded in shooting a bear by ^^ aiming at him gen- 
erally/' The success of this boyish incident was a cause for 
jest in his old age, because it contrasted so strongly with 
the method of his riper experience. As a mature hunter he 
would have hoped for no success from such ^' general '^ pro- 
cedure. Yet many of us attack our problems in just that 
way. We stand and gaze at them in the lump, as if we 
hoped that the element that is first to be taken hold of would, 
after a while, call out — ^' Peep, here I am." 

The difference between success and failure in the solution 
of puzzling situations lies almost entirely in the method of 
attack. A machine is out of order. One sort of man will 
walk all around it, look it over in a dazed sort of way, shake 
each of its parts, and possibly by chance and after long search- 
ing, may find the seat of the trouble and correct it. A crime 
has been committed ; he will walk around the scene of it, 
biting his lips and straining to think how to catch the guilty 
party — and he has one chance in a thousand of succeeding. 
Or a lesson is to be studied, a paper to be written, or a 
mathematical problem to be solved ; our friend will plunge 
planlessly into it, hoping to earn his success by the sweat 
of his brow — and luck may possibly reward his efforts. 

But another sort of man will go at the matter in a very 
different manner. He will examine the machine in but 

78 



How we Solve our Problems 79 

few places, yet, for some mysterious reason, the trouble is 
found lurking in one of these few even more surely than in 
the many which our friend above investigated. He will 
look hastily over the scene of a crime and go back to his 
office, but strangely, within a few hours, he will be able to 
tell just what has happened and lay his hands upon the 
culprit. Or he will sit down to his lesson, his paper, or his 
problem and they will fall apart for him as if by magic. He 
seems to have peculiar luck, every time he thrusts in his 
thumb, to pull out a plum. Why is this? It is merely 
because our second friend does not approach his puzzling 
situation empty minded but with certain hypotheses, that 
is guesses, in mind about it. How this works a number of 
illustrations will make clear. 

Illustration of use of hypotheses. — Practical. — You go 
into the back yard and find the limb of a valuable tree broken 
down. Interested in finding out the cause for the damage, 
you will at once proceed to set up and try out a number of 
suppositions — that is, guesses or hypotheses. First you 
will probably assume that a storm has broken it down. In 
testing this hypothesis it will occur to you that there 
should be other indications of the visitation of a storm — 
fences broken down, debris scattered about, etc. — and for 
these you will look. You will also consider the presence or 
absence of direct confirmation of a storm — the probability 
of your having heard it, reports from the neighbors, etc. If 
all these conditions of a storm are present, and fit together, 
you will probably be satisfied with that as an explanation, 
but if not you will make another supposition and try it out. 
You will suppose, let us say, that it has broken down of its 
own weight, or that some animal has pulled it down, or 
that a mischievous boy has done it. Each of these sup- 
positions, if true, would necessitate certain attendant con- 
ditions which, in running them down in turn, you will find 
either present or absent. If present they strengthen the 



8o Human Conduct 

hypothesis ; if absent they weaken it, and, unless found 
not to be really necessary attendants, disprove it. If no 
hypothesis will work, the incident remains unexplained ; if 
two or more seem to work, the one which is supported by 
the largest number, and by the most vital, of confirmatory 
evidences, and in which, at the same time, the elements fit 
together most harmoniously, is accepted. 

Or you miss your purse. How will you proceed to locate 
it? In exactly the same way as in the above case. One 
after another supposition will be tried out, and the most 
probable of these will be investigated. First you will fear, 
perhaps, that some one has stolen it. But who? Jones? 
He would have had access to it, it is true, but conditions were 
such that he could not possibly have got away with it without 
being detected. Johnson? But he could have made no 
use of it. It contained, as Johnson well knew, only mat- 
ter which he could not possibly have used without being 
caught. Stokes? But his character is such as to put his 
taking it out of the question. Yet these Were the only 
persons who could possibly have stolen it. The hypothesis 
that it was stolen must, therefore, be given up. Next you 
assume that you mislaid it somewhere. It occurs to you 
that you may have put it in the pocket of a certain coat. 
But you recollect that you recently pressed that coat, and 
hence it could not be there. Then you suppose that you 
left it at the store where you made your last purchase, or 
that you laid it on your desk, or that you dropped it on the 
street, and thus you proceed by setting up and examining 
one hypothesis after another until you find the correct one. 

Mechanical. — Or you have a mechanical problem to 
meet for which you must devise some sort of machine. Your 
machine you first make in imagination. You suppose that 
such and such a device will answer. You run it down in 
thought and see how it will work. If your way is blocked 
with that device you try out, in imagination, another and 



How we Solve our Problems 8i 

another and another until you find one that appears to 
satisfy the conditions. This machine you will then make 
and try out concretely. Moreover you proceed in exactly 
the same way for the detailed parts of a complicated machine 
as you do for the machine as a whole. You see the mechani- 
cal problem to be met. Vaguely you feel that a wheel, or 
a lever, or a combination of these of a certain character, 
will meet the conditions. As yet your mental construct is 
a mere hypothesis, but you at once begin to work upon it 
and prove it either true or false — prove its object, that is, 
either adapted or unadapted to its function. After the 
parts are severally perfected in thought you think them 
together into the completed machine, and see whether or 
not they will fit harmoniously. If they do you are ready 
to embody your ideas in tangible materials ; if they do not 
you must readjust your parts until they will fit systematically 
together. But your procedure is exactly the same as in the 
above two cases — first a guess, then its verification or 
refutation. 

Mathematical, — Nor do you attack a problem in mathe- 
matics in a different manner. You have, let us say, this 
theorem in Geometry to demonstrate : 

The line, joining the center of the square described upon the 
h^^potenuse of a right-angled triangle to the vertex of the right 
angle, bisects the right angle. 

If you are wise you will not merely think at this problem 
as a whole. You will marshal the various conditions that 
give you a bisected angle, and try them out in turn. First 
you will assume that the upper segment of the line BO (Fig. 
19) is the altitude of an isosceles triangle, which you already 
know bisects the vertex angle. But you immediately abandon 
that hypothesis when you see that it would necessitate the 
two legs, AB and BC, being equal, which is not given. 
Then you assume that ABCO is either a square or a rhombus, 
remembering that the diagonals bisect the angles of these 



82 



Human Conduct 



figures. But that you abandon for the same reason as 
led you to give up the former supposition. Then it oc- 
curs to you that BO may be the locus of points equally dis- 
tant from the sides, AB and BC, and hence bisect their 

angle. But, though you know 
that AO equals OC, you may 
not have a way of showing 
that these are the perpendicu- 
lar distances from to the 
sides, and hence are forced to 
turn from that hypothesis. 
Then it occurs to you that the 
two angles might be measured 
by equal arcs of the same circle, 
and hence be equal. In run- 
ning down this hypothesis you 
consider whether the figure can 
be properly inscribed in the 
necessary circle and find that, 
since the angles at B and 
are both right angles, it can. 
You find, too, that the arcs which measure the two angles of 
your theorem are subtended by the equal chords, AO and 
OCj hence are equal, and the joyful q. e. d. follows. 

History of science. — The great discoveries of history 
illustrate this same method. Morse was one day riding on 
a ship when he was shown the phenomena of electro-mag- 
netism. At once a suggestion came to him. Why not send 
electric currents over a long wire before they pass around 
the coil of the magnet, and thus, by making and breaking 
the current, control the operation of a machine miles away? 
This was first merely a guess, an hypothesis, a theory, but 
when run down it resulted in the now familiar telegraph. 
Jenner, when a youth, heard a country girl claim immunity 
from smallpox on the ground that she once had cowpox. 




How we Solve our Problems 83 

That suggested to him the hypothesis that smallpox might 
be prevented by inoculation — a guess that, when verified, 
gave us vaccination. Newton, according to the story, in- 
ferred from the fall of an apple that gravitation might ex- 
plain the holding of the planets in their orbits — and when 
he had traced out this hypothesis by elaborate mathematical 
investigation he gave us his theory of Universal Gravitation. 
Darwin had been for years studying the cause for the variety 
of species in plant and animal hfe, setting up and finding de- 
fective one hypothesis after another, when a book by Mal- 
thus on '' The Theory of Population " suggested to him natural 
selection — and that guess, when worked out, gave us the 
Theory of Evolution. Of this latter great scientist his son, 
Francis Darwin, reports : 

He often said that no one could be a good observer unless he 
was an active theorizer. It was as though he were charged with 
theorizing power ready to flow out into any channel on the slightest 
disturbance, so that no fact, however small, could avoid releasing 
a stream of theory, and thus the fact became magnified into im- 
portance. In this way it naturally happened that many untenable 
theories occurred to him. He was just to his theories and did not 
condemn them unheard ; and so it happened that he was willing 
to test what would seem to most people not at all worth testing. 
These rather wild trials he called "fools* experiments" and en- 
joyed them extremely. As an example I may mention that, finding 
the cotyledons of Biophytum to be highly sensitive to vibrations 
of the table, he fancied that they might perceive the vibrations of 
sound, and therefore made me play my bassoon close to a plant. 
The love of experiment was very strong in him, and I can remember 
the way he would say, ** I shan't be easy till I have tried it,'* as if 
an outside force were driving him. 

Detective work. — Everybody who reads the newspapers 
knows how" important these hypotheses are to detectives, to 
police, and to criminal lawyers. One Friday a young 
man was murdered. The detectives looked the situation 
over, went to their offices, and thought out a theory. On 
its basis they arrested a young man, whom no one had 



84 Human Conduct 

suspected, and by Monday he had confessed to the crime. 
Some time ago an unsigned letter came to the United States 
Department of Agriculture, complaining of graft in the 
forestry business of the far West. All marks by which the 
writer could be identified were carefully concealed. The 
letter was turned over to a detective agency, which at once 
busied itself to construct an hypothesis as to the writer. 
Examination of the list of persons financially interested in 
the section complained of showed that a Chicago man was 
a large holder. The inference was made that he might have 
written the complaint. A decoy letter was sent to him in- 
quiring about some innocent looking business matters. A 
careful study of his reply showed that the letter had been 
written with exactly the same typewriter that had been used 
for the letter of which the author was sought. Of just such 
successful use of hypotheses police, court, and detective 
records are crowded. It is indeed hard to escape the drag 
of a well- wrought theory. 

System in using hypotheses. — But it is not sufficient to 
employ hypotheses. If one is to be most successful one must 
use them systematically. There is probably no normal 
mind that does not begin at once to make some sort of hy- 
potheses when confronted with a puzzling situation. The 
difference lies in the way in which these are used. The 
bungler makes and tests them merely at random. When he 
stands before the machine that is out of working order his 
mental attitude is one of confused but of actual guesses. He 
would not take hold of this part and that and shake them in 
some particular way did he not guess vaguely that this or 
that might possibly be wrong. But his weakness is that he 
makes no difference between one hypothesis and another. 
They all make for him one crude lump. Whatever one 
occurs first, no matter how trivial it may be, he tries out. 
Its presence in his mind crowds out all others for the time. 
Making no distinction between the relevant and the irrele- 



How we Solve our Problems 85 

vant, he is destined to chase an endless number of will-o^- 
the-wisps and catch none of them. Thus, lost in the maze 
of possibilities, he finds his problem bafflingly complex. He 
is another of those poor fools who can not see the forest for 
the trees. 

But quite otherwise proceeds the skilled mechanic. Be- 
fore taking hold anywhere he calls up the chief accidents 
to which the machine of the illustration is subject. Of 
these rival major hypotheses a considerable part is then 
at least tentatively refuted by a general survey of the situ- 
ation. A mere glance is enough to render them improbable. 
The few remaining ones are balanced against each other and 
tested out in the order of their probability. The mechanic, 
thus, instead of fumbling vaguely over the whole ma- 
chine, investigates only a few critical places — often only 
one — and usually locates the trouble in but a very few 
moments. The physician does the same. He holds in mind 
the various diseases which are most likely to occur under 
the circumstances, abandons most of them upon a hasty 
survey of the symptoms, and runs down in more detail the 
remaining ones. Likewise the good detective. He does 
not plunge hastily into the first theory that occurs to him, 
but inhibits the tendency to do so until he can set along- 
side of this hypothesis other possible ones. Out of these he 
chooses the most probable for detailed consideration. So 
the good mathematician. If he is puzzled to prove two 
angles equal or two lines parallel he thinks over systemati- 
cally the various conditions that make angles equal or lines 
parallel, and tries them out on his given problem in the 
order in which the conditions necessary seem most likely 
to be present there. And so in general one can greatly 
multiply his chances of success in solving any problem by 
systematizing his mode of attack. If before he begins to 
hunt for a lost article he recalls the places where he may 
have left it, before he enters upon his search for a proper 



86 Human Conduct 

device he systematically reviews the types of devices that 
belong to this general field, or before he attacks his problem 
in geometry he assembles all of the known theorems that 
have to do with that sort of problem, the thing sought can 
not long escape him. It need be his only concern first to 
include all of these in his survey and then to investigate 
them in the order of their promised fruitfulness. 

Planning a day's work. — As a collateral apphcation of 
this same principle it may be remarked that the same sort 
of system which enables one to solve his problems econom- 
ically also enables him to attack most effectively his day's 
w^ork. Many a person wastes time because he has planned 
for the hour only one task, and if there should rise some 
hitch in that he only sits and fritters away his time. But 
if he, in going to his work, has planned for himself a number 
of things which he might do he could have a second task to 
fall back upon in case there were a hitch in that of his first 
preference. Thus there would be no wasted time, but at 
each moment he would have choice among several duties 
to which he could turn without the least delay. Many a 
successful man has owed his success to this very fact that 
he found a way to make use of the odd moments which others 
merely trifled away. 

Other requisites for problem solving. — Knowledge. — 
Returning now to our matter of problem solving, we have 
seen that the effective man must, in the first place, form 
hypotheses before he attacks his problem and, in the second 
place, must marshal a number of such hypotheses and 
trace out first, not necessarily the one that comes first to 
mind, but the one that appears most plausible. But three 
other traits of mind are also necessary. The first is knowl- 
edge. One must be well enough acquainted with the facts 
to know whether the situation in question would follow from 
the hypothesis if true. To be able, for instance, to handle 
geometry one must have . more than proper methods of 



How we Solve our Problems 87 

approach ; one must also know those elements of the subject 
upon which the solution of the problem in hand depends. 

Intellectual honesty. — The second necessity is intellectual 
honesty. It is really harder to be intellectually honest than 
one would think. The hypothesis upon which one first 
embarks is likely to become immediately his pet. He tends 
to close his eyes to facts that weaken it and overemphasize 
those which confirm it. He feels that his honor rests with 
establishing that hypothesis, and he unconsciously tries to 
stretch the facts so that his theory will fit them. On the 
other hand the truly scientific mind must be ready at any 
time to sacrifice its theories in the interests of conformity to 
the facts. One must actually seek to refute his own hy- 
potheses if his results are to be trustworthy. Professor 
Royce says that no one can be a true philosopher who has 
not at some time profoundly doubted his own system, and 
this same thing is true of scientific theories or even of those 
which we are every hour forming in solving our practical 
problems. 

Depth of penetration. — But, as a third qualification, the 
effective man must add some depth of penetration if he would 
see matters in their true perspective. The common mind 
is impulsive and empirical. It stays on the surface and 
jumps hastily at very superficial explanations. It can 
connect simple, concrete terms, but can not trace out the 
relations between underlying causes and effects. Any one 
who knows the facts of electricity can see the relation be- 
tween a broken wire and the cessation of the current, but it 
was only by Newton that the fall of an apple could be con- 
nected with the attraction of the moon b}^ the earth as the 
cause of its position and motion. Any one can see super- 
ficial analogies, but it is the mark of the genius to see un- 
derlying analogies, and it is out of the perception of these 
underlying analogies that have arisen the great hypotheses 
of history which have produced notable inventions, detected 



I 



88 Human Conduct 

well-concealed crime, and explained the phenomena of 
science and philosophy. It is true that this ability to get 
beneath the surface may be partly native, but it can also 
doubtless be cultivated. It is as much a matter of mental 
habit as of natural keenness. To cultivate it one needs to 
interest oneself in fundamental theory — to get into the 
habit of looking at matters from the standpoint of their 
underlying causes. One needs, that is, to get into the way of 
thinking, rather than of merely sensing, his world. 

Thus the effective mind is always active in some specific 
way in the presence of its problems. It is always asking 
specific questions, making definite suppositions. In no other 
way can it achieve results, whether it be engaged in simple 
perception or in the solution of the most complicated prob- 
lems. And that mind accomplishes most that is most fruit- 
ful in forming these hypotheses, most systematic in classify- 
ing them, and running them down, and most heroic in 
abandoning wrong ones the moment they are shown to be 
erroneous. 

EXERCISES 

1. Show that one uses the method of hypotheses in planning a 
vacation, or even a dinner. 

2. Demonstrate some original in geometry or some identity in 
trigonometry, and then explain in detail how you found the solution. 

3. Show in some detail how you would attack the problem of 
why Napoleon could retain so strong a grip upon the French people. 

4. What is the value of suspending judgment in problem solv- 
ing? Cite cases where "cocksureness" has militated against 
effective thinking. 

5. Can one be too timid about running down hypotheses which, 
on the surface, look improbable? Point out some great scientific 
achievements which have come about through running down such 
''fools' hypotheses." 

6. What is the graphical method of working up results of investi- 
gations? What is its value in problem solving and in the exposi- 
tion of the results? 



CHAPTER VII 
OUR CONCEPTS AND HOW WE MAKE THEM CLEAR 

Differences in ability to do abstract thinking. — A father 
and his son, about to go for a row, found that water had 
leaked into the boat. A clever dog was sent to get the bucket 
with which to bail it out. This he was unable to find and 
returned with nothing. The boy was sent, but he too re- 
turned empty-handed. Then the father himself went. 
Unable to find the bucket he noticed a sponge lying by, 
saw that, for his purpose, this was the equivalent of the 
vessel sought, and brought it along. Now all three had 
seen the same sponge but to the first two it had been mean- 
ingless. These had in mind only the concrete bucket sought 
and, failing to get that, were helpless. But the father was 
thinking in more abstract terms. His image was not merely 
of a particular physical object, but of anything which pos- 
sessed the quality of having apartments into which water 
could be put and thus lifted out of the boat. He had ab- 
stracted out of the situation this one essential attribute of 
containing cavities that could be filled and emptied, and 
was prepared to find this quality embodied in a wide range 
of objects, any one of which would serve his purpose. 

Now it is just this power that distinguishes man from the 
lower animals, that gives to the adult superiority over the 
child, that marks the clever and effective man off from the 
stupid one. The latter can deal only with objects as wholes, 
with the concrete, with surface resemblances ; the former can 
pick the situation to pieces and get at its essence, can think 

89 



go 



Human Conduct 



in terms of abstract principles, can detect underlying simi- 
larities. A dog can learn to push off a hoop and thus open 
a gate, but if the hoop is changed to what is really the same 
in principle, a latch, he is nonplussed. A mouse can be 
taught to open a trap door by pulling a string in a certain 
part of his cage and thus escape, but place the string in a 
different position and he is lost. A man could readily solve 
such problem because he would not be thinking of concrete 
hoop or string, but of the more abstract matter of removing 
the impediment to the door — be that impediment in this 
case one thing or another. The same thing is true of one 
man as compared with another. One type, capable of deal- 
ing with underlying principles, is ready to meet a difficulty 
in any number of different ways ; another type, concrete 
in its mode of thinking, is baffled if the difficulty is presented 
in any other way than the specific one about which he has 
already been taught. 

We have here, then, for consideration a power of the 
human mind which is of the most fundamental importance 

— the power to deal, not with things as concrete wholes, 
but with certain abstract qualities which are embodied in 
these but which are also embodied in many other things as 
well, so that he who possesses this power is master of them 
all instead of merely those few dressed out in the familiar garb. 

Concepts. — Now to have such notion of a class of objects 
bound together through their possession of common prop- 
erties is to have what psychologists call a concept. You 
have, for example, an idea of tree. What is it? It is not 
of this tree, nor of that one, nor of yonder one. It is of 
tree in general. It is neither oak nor walnut nor cherry nor 
maple. It includes all of these and many besides. Your 
idea is of every object which embodies the essence of tree 

— woody fiber and a shape and size confined within certain 
limits. Similarly you can form an idea of house in general 
which applies to all that class of buildings that possess the 



Our Concepts 91 

common property of being adapted to live in. So likewise 
you can think not only of Gyp, but of the whole class to which 
Gyp belongs ; not only of a specific book, but of books apart 
from any such limitations ; not only of a particular chair 
in your parlor, but of chairs in general ; not only of single 
acts of justice, but of justice itself; not only of laws, but of 
law ; not only of teaching a class at a particular time in a 
given room, but of the vocation of teaching ; not only of the 
sacrament as administered on a certain Sunday, or of a doc- 
trine as set forth in a special sermon, but of a church as a 
whole. You have here brought together your various ex- 
periences with dogs, with books, with chairs, with deeds of 
justice, with acts of teaching, with your church as expressed 
in many different ways, and have built up out of them uni- 
tary concepts of dog, or book, or chair, or justice, or teach- 
ing, or church. These ideas which refer to classes instead 
of to single perceptual objects are what we call concepts. 
*^ Conception, ^^ then, as Angell defines it, ^^ is that mental 
operation by means of which we bring together the common 
points of our various experiences and mentally consolidate 
them into ideas ; ideas which we are then able to use as 
symbols, or representatives, of these manifold items. ^' 

Conception vs. perception. — Conception — the mental 
act involved in having concepts — is usually contrasted with 
perception, which we have already studied. Perception is 
of individual objects ; conception is of classes of objects, 
or of the object under different conditions. If you stand 
before a chair and recognize it as such, you have a percept of 
the chair; if you think chair without referring to any 
particular one of the class, you have a concept of it. Simi- 
larly if you are confronted by John Smith and recognize him 
as such, what you have is a percept ; if you have a notion of 
John Smith built up out of the many times you have seen 
him in his different moods, different clothes, different places, 
different occupations, etc., it is a concept. A concept is 



92 Human Conduct 

thus more or less abstract. It has brought together many 
different experiences and has reached into the heart of these 
varying experiences with the object and pulled out its es- 
sence and now holds this essence in mind. A percept, on 
the other hand, is concrete. It refers to a particular object 
of a class, and one, too, that stands right before you. It is 
of this tree here, this chair, this John Smith as he now ap- 
pears before you. 

Value of concepts. — Economy. — Concepts are of the ut- 
most value to us because they make possible a very great 
economy in our mental life, and hence enable us to make a 
degree of headway which would otherwise be absolutely im- 
possible. The lower animals can adjust themselves to in- 
dividual objects, but they can not, at one effort, adjust them- 
selves to a whole class, for they can not generalize upon the 
properties of a class. They can learn to avoid this trap and 
that, but at the essence of trap they can not get. Hence they 
can work out no general method of dealing with traps. But 
man, employing his class concepts, is not confined to one 
object after another. He can throw large bunches of them 
together into one group and deal with all of these at a single 
stroke. When he once has an adequate concept of a class 
he knows in advance all the members of this class and can 
plan against them all in one act. He does not try to work 
out a method of killing this particular codling moth or that 
one, but busies himself to find a chemical compound, and a 
means of using it, that is fatal to pestiferous insects as a class. 
He does not learn how to build a house of a given size, at a 
given place, and of given materials, but works out the prin- 
ciples of architecture for houses in general. He does not 
confine himself to a study of this piece of iron, but works out a 
theory of the uses and behavior of iron as a whole. He thus 
saves himself the endless task of dealing with an indefinite 
number of concrete objects, as one without concepts would 
be obliged to do, but gets right at the heart of the matter 



Our Concepts 93 

by working with the essence of the group, knowing that what 
is true of the essence of all will be true of each taken sepa- 
rately.' Thus in conceptual thinking we go straight to our 
goal, stepping as it were from mountain top to mountain 
top, and hence making a degree of progress which would be 
absolutely impossible could we not, through having their 
central secret, deal with thousands of details with a single 
stroke. Indeed the largest part of any scientific study is 
to develop new concepts — to find fundamental likenesses 
which enable us to group together things which previously 
stood alone, and thus know at once what to expect of them 
through knowing their fundamental nature. 

Basis of all thinking. — Indeed not only are concepts 
important because they help us thus to economize in our 
dealings with our world, but they lie at the basis of all of our 
thinking, and are the stuff of which it is made. Without 
concepts there could be no thinking. To think is to relate 
one concept to another, or a percept to a concept. Thus 
we have a concept of grass and a concept of greenness. 
When we compare them and find they fit together, we get 
the judgment, ^^ The grass is green. ^^ Or we may compare 
the concepts of patriotism and of goodness and get the judg- 
ment that patriotism is good ; or, from comparing the con- 
cepts man and quadruped, judge that man is not a quad- 
ruped. Or we may stand before a certain object, com- 
pare its qualities with those of tree, and judge, ^^ This is a 
tree,^' or ^^ This is not a tree ^' as the circumstances may 
warrant (concept with percept). But without such com- 
parison of concepts there is no thinking. Hence to have 
concepts is the first requisite of a rational life. The creature 
that lived merely on the perceptual level, that never threw 
together its experiences with men, or trees, or vertebrates, 
and learned to adjust itself to their class as a whole, through 
adjusting itself to its essential features, could never, through 
thought, prepare itself in advance for any emergency. It 



94 Human Conduct 

would need to take its experience merely as one brute fact 
after another. For to mature any policy of dealing with 
objects of certain kinds it is necessary to know in advance 
how they will act, hence what essential properties they 
possess, and consequently to have a concept of the class to 
which they belong. 

Value of clear concepts. — And if concepts are necessary 
for thinking, it is evident that clear and adequate concepts 
are necessary for clear and adequate thinking. You have 
read something of the feudalism of the Middle Ages. How 
clear are your notions of it? Can you tell me whether a 
typical knight, riding along a narrow pass and meeting a 
peasant also on horseback, would have felt obliged to in- 
convenience himself to let the peasant by? If you had 
lent money to a knight how confident could you have been 
of his returning it? If, at certain times, it had appeared 
clear that he could not make himself useful through ad- 
venture, could the typical knight have been counted upon, 
during those times, to make himself useful through ordinary 
manual labor? If you can not answer these, and other 
similar questions, it is because your concepts of chivalry are 
more or less hazy. If you knew accurately and fully what 
qualities the typical knight possessed, you could judge with 
certainty what he would have done under any proposed 
conditions. To think clearly and adequately about this 
matter, therefore, demands first of all adequate concepts of 
its factors. 

Why do we trust what a recognized expert says on a sub- 
ject within his field ? Is it not because he has gained clear 
ideas on what he is talking about? If, for example, he is a 
specialist on birds, he has an accurate concept of each of the 
species. He knows exactly what are the essential qualities 
of each. When pressed for certain details he does not find 
his notions become hazy, but can lay direct hold upon what 
is wanted. Everything is there and is there in a clear-cut 



Our Concepts 95 

way, so that he can speak straightforwardly upon his subject 
without omissions or misstatements. But those of us who 
are not experts soon find our minds a blank when pressed 
for details. Our ideas prove but shadowy and indistinct. 
And so we can not pass a judgment upon the matter that 
would be more than a mere guess. 

Test of the clearness of concepts, — We must, then, have 
clear concepts if we are to do clear thinking. Now do we 
as a rule have? Consider for a moment the clarity of your 
own concepts. In politics you must make choice of being 
a Democrat, Republican, Independent, Socialist, etc. Even 
now you are probably debating on the relative merits of 
these parties. But do you know exactly and in detail what 
each is ? Or is your notion of each somewhat hazy and your 
supposed thinking about the matter rather prejudice than 
real thinking? You are a Methodist, a Baptist, a Christian 
Scientist, or a Catholic. Do you know exactly why? 
Have you a perfectly clear idea of just what each one is? 
Nay, even when we come to matters considered common- 
place, are your ideas perfectly clear? Try to think of all 
that the following terms involve and see whether your con- 
cept of each is so complete, clear-cut, and accurate that you 
can follow each of them out into all of its shades of meaning 
without any haziness : law, good, stock, service, art, action, 
salt, rehgion, government, school. If you really find it so, 
you are more fortunate than most of mortals. For my 
own part at least I soon come to a, fringe of duskiness sur- 
rounding every one of them. 

When we actually run down our concepts we find a sur- 
prisingly large number of unexplored wildernesses in them. 
In fact very few of our class notions are clear when hard 
pressed, and that is why so much of our thinking is loose, 
disjointed, and valueless. 

Methods of making concepts adequate. — Wide experi- 
ence, — Now there are at least three conditions which 



96 Human Conduct 

make for adequacy in our concepts, of which we must take 
advantage if we would think effectively. First is adequate 
knowledge or experience. Our concepts generalize our ex- 
perience. As soon as the child has seen two dogs he begins 
to form a concept of dog which includes the common qualities 
of both of these. If both are poodle dogs but one white and 
the other black, the child's concept will be of a small, woolly 
animal of a roly-poly shape but not necessarily of a given 
color. If next he sees a pug dog, he will leave out of his con- 
cept woolliness and certain elements of shape, especially 
about the head. Seeing a terrier he will greatly revise his 
notion of shape, but keep that of smallness and gentleness. 
When, however, he sees a shepherd dog, a hound, a bulldog, 
a Newfoundland dog, etc., he will successively correct his 
concept so as to include the common properties of all of these 
animals. Thus with his widening experience his concept 
grows progressively more adequate, but it can not be com- 
plete until he has seen every different kind of dog in existence. 
And this is in general true. Other things being equal, the 
more experience we have had with any class of objects the 
more nearly perfect our notion of it as a class. 

On the other hand, if our experience has been narrow, our 
notions are almost sure to be extremely vague and distorted. 
The person who has met few different kinds of men, or who 
has heard a political doctrine expounded from but few angles, 
or who has made but a superficial study of any subject, has 
incomplete and one-sided concepts of these ; and when he 
discusses them, necessarily does so in a superficial and biased 
manner. Yet unfortunately most of us are unaware of the 
inadequacy of our concepts — indeed the less we know the 
more we are tempted to think we know. Their content, 
when we know little of the subject to which they belong, is 
so meager and so definite that we can handle them with a 
sense of security with which the real expert, who has seen 
enough of the matter to realize its complexity, is not blessed. 



Our Concepts 97 

Hence the bigotry of so many ignorant men and the modesty 
of the true scholar. Of course the remedy for this inade- 
quacy of concepts is more experience — more reading and 
study, more travel and meeting of men — so that one may 
have met as many and as great variations within the class 
as possible. 

Analysis. — But it is not enough to have had many ex- 
periences. There are people who have met many men, or 
seen many trees, or traveled much over the earth, and yet 
have no clear notions of what they have met. Their defect 
is that they have never analyzed their experiences. They 
have let them as vague wholes fall into mind and out again 
just as the lower animals probably do. They have not 
concerned themselves to separate the essence of the varying 
objects from their accidents, and hence when they under- 
take to put to themselves or others just what the thing really 
is, they find their notion a mere confused jumble. They 
have a vague sense of it, but it seems just beyond their 
fingertips. Their concepts have remained, in spite of their 
many-sided experience, on essentially the same level as those 
of the lower animals. One must, therefore, not only have 
experiences, but must analyze them and pick out their 
essential elements — must learri to recognize the universal 
in the individual. It is customary for psychologists to point 
out several steps in this analysis of varying objects which 
yet belong to the same class. After the presentation of the 
objects, which a wide experience affords, they must be 
systematically compared with each other. Without such 
comparison of one with another we are not helped at all 
by meeting many of them. As a result of this comparison 
we can discover the common properties of the group and 
abstract them from the mass of accidents with which they 
are attended. After this abstraction of the common elements 
comes their generalization into an organic idea of the group, 
a concept ; and finally a name is given to the class of 



98 Human Conduct 

which the idea has been thus formed {denomination). The 
steps, then, in building up a concept are (1) presentation, 
(2) comparison, (3) abstraction, (4) generahzation, and 
(5) denomination or naming. 

Guarding against bias. — But, finally, if we are to be 
sure of having balanced and adequate concepts, we must 
guard ourselves against being misled by a trick which the 
mind has of tagging a concept with some concrete image. 
No purely abstract idea can be brought to the focus of 
consciousness. It must always have some particular image 
to which it may be attached, though sometimes this image is 
only a word or a bodily movement. Thus if I mention park, 
some particular park will come up before you. When you 
think woman, you get an image of one of this sex of a certain 
size and with specific characteristics. When you think 
dog there does not come up out of your past experience a 
composite picture of all dogs but some concrete dog, Gyp, 
which you know best, is likely to stand for the class. Of 
course you know that, while you see these in your mind's 
eye, you mean much more than them — that you mean the 
whole class, which, you recognize if you stop to think, does 
not possess all the peculiarities of these specific representa- 
tives. 

But then, if you are as lazy intellectually as most of us 
are, you do not take the trouble to stop and think, but 
permit your notion to be biased by the special character of 
the representative which for you concretely images the 
group. Unless you keep on your guard, you will inevitably 
think of the class, not as its essence would require, but in 
terms of what are merely peculiarities of the concrete rep- 
resentative about which the concept at this time centers, 
and seriously warp your judgment in consequence. It is 
doubtful whether a woman who thought dog in terms of her 
pet poodle, which could not bite through a man's trousers 
if he tried, could judge sanely of an ordinance requiring 



Our Concepts 99 

dogs to be muzzled, or if a person who pictured man in terms 
of a scoundrel who yesterday beat him out of his money could 
fairly estimate an ethical discourse on the inherent nobility 
of the human species. Neither could think straight because 
neither could have unbiased concepts on account of the dis- 
torting influence of the concrete tag to these concepts. Of 
course we can not avoid having the class represented to us 
in this concrete way, but we can avoid bias by stopping 
for a moment to think — by checking our tendency to evalu- 
ate the group in a way determined by some non-typical 
representative with which we happen to be intimately 
acquainted, and which consequently first surges into mind, 
and by holding fast to what sober reflection shows us to be 
the average characteristics of the members of the class — 
by dealing, that is, with its essence rather than its accidents. 

Defining the meaning of a concept. — The person, then, 
who has had a wide experience with a class of objects, who 
has analyzed this experience and picked out the essential 
qualities of the class, and who has been careful to avoid let- 
ting his concept be biased by having it determined by some 
non-representative member of the group, has done much to 
insure clear ideas of it, and hence to prepare himself to think 
and act regarding it without confusion. When any member 
of the class is presented to such a one, he can recognize it, no 
matter how much covered up with misleading elements, nor 
can he be deceived into taking anything extraneous as a 
member of this class. Thus an experienced physician, who 
has met the above conditions, can not be misled about 
what disease the patient is suffering, from, nor can an ex- 
pert mechanic be fooled as to what is the trouble with a 
machine out of order. Through the maze of confusing de- 
tails each can adequately sense the real trouble. 

But before one's concepts are entirely clear another step 
is necessary — the ability to put these ideas into language. 
One never knows a matter completely until he can com- 



loo Human Conduct 

municate it to others. Professor James distinguishes be- 
tween '^ Knowledge of acquaintance ^^ and ^^ Knowledge 
about '^ an object. When one has merely the former, one 
can recognize the object and its properties when presented, 
but can not define them to himself or others. But when one 
has the latter, one has made definite the thing^s relations to 
other things and can set these forth clearly to himself and 
others. Now the persons who have not advanced beyond 
the stage described above have an ^^acquaintance with'^ the 
classes conceived, but no clear '' knowledge about ^^ them, 
and their next step in complete clarification of their concepts 
is to make clear their relations so as to be able to state these 
to themselves and others. This involves three steps, which 
we shall take up in order — definition, division, and contrast. 
Definition. — A person unskilled in the technique of 
effective definition, when confronted with the necessity of 
telling what an object is, will usually begin to enumerate 
its properties. If you ask him what a chair is he will reply 
that it has four legs, is about two feet high, and about eight- 
een inches square, has a back, etc. To tell you what zoology 
is he will enumerate some of the subjects studied in it. In 
explaining what a monopoly is he will give you a few illus- 
trations. Such an account of these terms could never, of 
course, be adequate. It picks out merely at random a few 
qualities of the object, and these often only accidental ones. 
It is an indication of lack of definite knowledge on the part 
of the speaker and can leave only confused ideas in the mind 
of the hearer. But quite otherwise proceeds the skilled 
expositor. He gets directly at the heart of the matter by 
stating that a chair is a piece of furniture fitted with a back 
and designed for one person to sit upon ; that zoology is 
the science of animal life ; and that a monopoly is a com- 
bination for the control of the production of a commodity. 
And yet in this brief statement the latter has much more 
adequately covered the matter than has the former with 



Our Concepts loi 

all of his long, rambling account. At one drive he has got 
so exactly at the essence of the matter as to leave absolutely 
no room for obscurity or for ambiguity. 

(1) Proximate genus. — Now what is there about this 
latter mode of defining that makes it so brief and yet so 
adequate? Two features. First is a reference of the ob- 
ject to some higher class (or genus, as the logicians call it) 
to which it belongs. A chair is a piece of furniture, there 
being a whole class of pieces of furniture of which chair is 
only one representative (one species or sub-group) . Zoology 
is a science, a larger genus to which zoology belongs as one 
species. A monopoly is a combination^ there being a whole 
class of combinations of which this is one member. Similarly 
a horse is a quadruped, a man is an animal, a mountain is 
an elevation of land, there being a whole class of quadrupeds, 
of animals, and of elevations of land. So the first step in 
logical definition is to refer the object defined to some larger 
class. 

The class must, however, be the one that stands im- 
mediately above the class defined (must be the '^ proximate '^ 
genus, as the logicians say) if your reference to it is to help 
you materially. It would still leave the term confused to 
say that a chair is a thing to sit upon, that zoology is the 
study of animals, that a monopoly is something to control 
production, that a horse is a creature used to perform work. 
These upper classes are too large, and leave too much room 
for play within them, to settle definitely what your term 
means. Again you would gain nothing by classifying Soc- 
rates as a living being and little by calling him a man. Your 
definition is worth progressively more when you class him 
as European, Greek, Athenian, and worth most when you 
put him in that small group of Athenian Sophists of the 
fourth century b.c. You know little of what to expect of 
a man if you have classified him merely as a dangerous 
citizen, but when you have tagged him as an anarchist, you 



I02 Human Conduct 

know much better how to proceed in deahng with him. You 
are at a loss to deal with a child as long as you regard him 
only as stupid, but as soon as you have placed him as a 
middle-grade imbecile, you begin to know where to take hold. 
The more immediately above the object is the class to which 
the object is referred, then, the more meaning the reference 
will give to the idea. 

(2) Differentia. — Having then referred the object to its 
proximate genus, the second step is to pick out the respect 
in which the object differs from others belonging to the same 
class. There are many kinds of furniture in the class to 
which chair is referred, but chair differs from all the rest of 
them in having a back and being designed for one person, to 
sit upon. There are many combinations, but monopoly is 
marked off clearly from all the rest by its being one to con- 
trol production. Psychology, Chemistry, Zoology, and 
others are all sciences, but there are many sciences of many 
kinds and your notion of each is still crude until you can 
give a basis for discriminating one from another. But when 
you remark that Psychology is the science of the functioning 
of the mind, that Chemistry is the science of molecular 
structure and change, and that Zoology is the science of 
animal life, you have cleared up this ambiguity. Among 
all the sciences none has to do directly with mental phe- 
nomena but Psychology. When this matter is present, 
you have Psychology ; when it is absent, you do not have 
it. Similarly wherever you have to do with molecular com- 
position, you have Chemistry; and where with animal life, 
as such, you have Zoology ; and where these are lacking, you 
do not have these sciences. These qualities definitely mark 
off one from the others, and constitute an infallible test by 
which you can determine on which sid-e of the boundary line 
any element falls, and if your concept of the class is to be en- 
tirely clear and clean-cut, you must have made perfectly 
plain to yourself what is this crucial character in which it 



Our Concepts 103 

differs from all others of the class. In every perfect definition 
of the class there are, then, two steps — first, to refer the 
object to its nearest class, its proximate genus, and second, 
to make clear the specific differentia which distinguishes it 
from all others of its group. 

Division. — But a second thing you may do to further 
clear up your idea. So far you have got your object clearly 
marked off from others and are, through knowing its differ- 
ential qualities, in possession of the key as to what can 
belong there and what can not. But you may know com- 
paratively little about what it really contains until you go 
a step further. You take this step when you make ex- 
plicit just what content is included within it. You have, 
for example, a concept of science, knowing just what its 
general character is and how it is marked off from others. 
You help yourself to understand it better by enumerating 
the kinds of sciences. Science^ may be physical on the one 
hand or moral on the other. Physical science may be me- 
chanical, consisting of Physics and Chemistry, or organic, 
consisting of Biology and Physiology. Moral science may 
be political, consisting of History and Sociology, or psycho- 
logical, consisting of Noetics, ^Esthetics, and Ethics. Simi- 
larly school can be understood only when you have in mind 
the different kinds of schools, mammal when you remember 
the kinds that fall under it. Psychology when you acquaint 
yourself with its many subfields, law when you regard its 
several phases, etc. This process, which runs parallel to 
and supplements definition, the logicians call Division. It 
is a device to which we resort perhaps more frequently 
than we know. If we do not count upon our fingers the 
items covered by a term, as first, second, third, we do hastily 
make in mind a survey of what they are. If we did not do 
so it is doubtful whether we could ever have anything like 
an adequate notion of what our idea really involves. Cer- 
1 Hyslop's division. 



I04 Human Conduct 

tainly no one could get a subject definitely enough before 
him to make a balanced speech upon it who did not thus re- 
sort to explicit division of the content of his idea. 

Contrast. — And finally you may make your notions defi- 
nite by studying their limits — by contrasting them with 
elements that lie near to them but yet are excluded from them. 
Take the meaning of Socialism for example. Many people^s 
idea of it consists of a vague mass of unjustifiable supposi- 
tions imported into the mind promiscuously, if not brewed 
there by prejudice. Among these will probably be found 
the supposition that Socialism is one with Anarchism, and 
an important step in clarifying your notion of the doctrine 
consists in finding that it has nothing whatever to do with 
Anarchism. Whatever else it is, it does not believe in the 
abolition of all government as Anarchism does. Then you 
will find that it is not the same as Communism. It does 
not mean that everything shall be thrown together into a 
single pool, and all draw as they need to out of this pool, 
which is the theory of Communism. Nor does it mean in 
essence a redistribution of the property now existing. It 
does not propose thus, as its basic principle, to take the 
property of the rich and divide it among the poor. Nor 
is it a general term to cover all that is revolutionary. And 
so you go on, removing one false connotation after another, 
until you have the ground covered by the term clearly marked 
off from that to which it does not spread. After you have 
done this the positive definition of the doctrine — that it 
is the collective ownership of the tools of production — be- 
comes much more definite in meaning than it could pos- 
sibly be without such contrast. 

Or, out of a somewhat broader field, but one that could 
be shown to have much in common with conception, take 
the question of why you have chosen a certain profession. 
If your decision is really well founded, it is because your at- 
tention has gone to rival vocations which, for sufficient 



Our Concepts 105 

reasons, you have definitely rejected. You have been 
strengthened, for example, in your determination to study 
medicine because you see that you are not well fitted for 
business, since you do not have access to the necessary capi- 
tal to enable you to be largely successful there. You are not 
fitted for teaching because you lack the necessary patienx^e, 
and because you object to being a mere cog in a wheel such 
as you understand the average teacher must be. You have 
decided not to take up law because you are not a public 
speaker and feel doubtful about your ability ever to become 
one. The ministry you are sure you do not wish to enter 
because you do not have the devotional spirit which 
is essential to the successful preacher. And so you go on 
until, by exclusion, you have narrowed down to the one 
which you have chosen, and feel sure, in consequence, that 
you are right in your choice. Again, why are you a Metho- 
dist ? Why not a Presbyterian or a Baptist ? What specific 
things about the Episcopalians repel you? In what definite 
way is the Unitarian Church unsuited to your needs ? Just 
why, not in general but in detail, are you not a Catholic? 
What exactly is your convincing reply to the doctrines of the 
Theosophists ? Evidently, until you know just why you are 
not a member of one of these, you can never know clearly 
why you are a Methodist. If we made a general practice 
of thus contrasting all of our ideas with others in the same 
field, they would certainly be much more definite and ade- 
quate in consequence. 

Contrasts must not he trivial. ^ — Of course these contrasts 
are important only when the matter excluded lies very 
close to the border. It would not be worth while, for ex- 
ample, to consider that Socialism is not the history of Napo- 
leon but it would be worth while to consider that it is not in 
essence a denial of the right to hold any private property 
whatsoever. For the one excluded element is so far away 
that no person would be tempted to include it in his concept 



io6 Human Conduct 

of Socialism, while the other comes so nearly falling within 
that it is likely to be vaguely included, and consequently to 
distort one's idea. Similarly, to say that a cow is not a 
worm would be stupid, but to observe that a caterpillar is 
not a true worm may be quite significant. It is these nice 
distinctions, cutting down just close to the border hne, that 
give definiteness and completeness to one's notions. In- 
deed a careful, scientific writer spends much time and energy 
in distinguishing between closely related terms. He wants 
his readers to get exact notions, not loose and confused ones, 
and he knows that the surest way to make definite just what 
a term does include and what it does not is to compare and 
contrast it with other terms that are nearly but not quite 
identical with it. 

Summary. — Summarizing, then, what has been said in 
this chapter, we find that the basis of our thinking is con- 
cepts. These are our general ideas — ideas of a class of 
objects. These concepts are very likely to be vague and 
confused. Yet clear thinking demands clear concepts as 
its basis. We can clear these up, on the one hand, by getting 
wide experience with the class in question, by analyzing this 
experience so as to pick out its essential elements, and by 
being careful not to allow our concepts to be biased by 
having them represented by some non-typical member which 
we permit to determine our attitude toward the class. 
On the other hand, we can still further clear up our concepts 
by logically defining them, at least to ourselves, in doing which 
we refer them to the nearest larger class — the proximate 
genus — and then learn to distinguish them from others of 
that class by finding what belongs uniquely to them and to 
no others of the group — their differentiae ; by applying 
division to them and thus finding what are the various parts* 
or phases which they contain ; and finally by contrasting them 
with others which are nearly but not exactly like them in 
character. 



Our Concepts 107 

EXERCISES 

1. What do you call the mental process involved when you recog- 
nize an object as a tree? When you think "tree**? When you 
see that a certain tree is a maple? When you conclude that be- 
cause a certain tree is a straight, tall oak tree, and because such 
trees make good lumber, that this one would make good lumber? 

2. Compare the concept of a friend with the percept of him. 

3. Show of what value concepts of the several diseases are to 
a physician. 

4. Why are old men usually wiser, in practical affairs, than 
young men ? Why do some comparatively young men forge ahead 
of older ones in this respect ? 

5. Give logical definitions of the following : bed, triangle, circle, 
water, democracy, psychology. Point out the genus and differen- 
tia in each definition. 

6. Criticize the following definitions : 
(a) A chair is a thing to sit upon. 

(6) Water is a liquid which will support floating bodies. 
(c) ''What is the tongue? The whip of the air." 

7. Suppose you were intending to give an address on books, 
advising the board of a newly organized library what to purchase. 
Show how you would divide the term hooks. 

8.' Show how you would make clear by contrast the meaning of 
each of the following terms: business college, art, science, psy- 
chology. 



CHAPTER VIII 

HOW WE KEEP OUR IDEAS CLEAR — CAREFUL 
USE OF WORDS 

Instability of untagged concepts. — I remember reading, 
several years ago, an ingenious story with an unintended 
psychological significance. A young lady, who was beset by 
several aggressive and persistent lovers, came finally to the 
point where it was necessary to choose among them. But 
somehow the problem was too complex for her to think 
her way clearly through it. What she had accomplished 
would persistently slip away from her before she could finish 
the rest, so that the matter remained as chaotic as it had 
been at the beginning. At length she hit upon an expedi- 
ent. A short, thick breastpin, stuck into a cushion before 
her, was made to represent the merchant suitor, whose 
horizontal proportions nature had made disproportionately 
large compared to his vertical dimensions. A long black 
hatpin stood for the minister, who was tall and slender, and 
of rather somber mien. A brilliant, slender little scarf- 
pin symbolized the lawyer, for he was tidy in dress and spar- 
kling in wit, w^hile a massive old belt pin was just the thing 
with which to fix the bodily and intellectually ponderous old 
millionaire. 

Words as tags. — Now most of us are not fortunate enough 
to have so many lovers that we must tag them to keep them 
all in mind, but our concepts when untagged are as treacher- 
ously elusive as were the favored sweetheart ^s many swains. 
And just as the pin could serve as a concrete center for keep- 
ing fixed in the mind of the lady in the above illustration 

io8 



How we Keep our Ideas Clear 109 

the masses of experience which constituted for her the several 
lovers, so can a name serve to bind and fix in definite form 
the otherwise shifting elements which make up a concept. 
Without such concrete center the concept remains hazy and 
inarticulate ; tagged, its shifting elements are henceforth 
crystallized into an ordered and clear-cut synthesis. The 
word becomes a focus around which gather the phases of 
meaning which constitute the concept. When you have 
got hold of the word you have got hold of the center of the 
concept around which its fringe of multiple ramifications 
adheres. 

How indefinite thoughts are when not tagged with words 
is shown by the extreme vagueness of our daydreaming. 
After an interval of even a minute or two we can not recol- 
lect more than the merest fragment of what we were thinking 
about. We had been letting a flood of concrete imagery 
— sensuous pictures of what we were thinking — roll through 
our minds, and the moment it was through it was gone. We 
might by chance feel something like the same state over 
again, but, since the experience was unnamed, it possessed 
no definite handle by which it could be got hold of and 
brought back at will, as can our thoughts couched in verbal 
terms. If we had no such name, for example, as dog, we 
could think now of this particular dog and now of that, each 
time admiring or fearing or hating as the case might justify ; 
but never would we be likely to react adequately upon the 
essence of dogs as a class. We could not at one moment be 
just, in our attitude, toward all dogs. But with the concept 
dog, tagged by a definite symbol, we are able to anchor to 
this, and hence view in a balanced way the class as a whole. 

It has been observed that people who have no specific 
nam^es for very short or very long distances have also hazy 
notions of their extent. When people speak in terms of 
the breadth of a finger, or of a day^s journey, they think in 
equally crude terms. When, however, they name these as 



no Human Conduct 

so many centimeters, or so many kilometers, their notions, 
of them at once take on exactness. It has been found by 
experiment that one can detect about five shades of gray 
when unnamed, but when one adopts names for the different 
shades the number which he can discriminate is at once 
greatly augmented. Certainly words as tags can help us 
through our maze of concepts as readily as pins as tags could 
help our lady through her maze of lovers. J. S. Mill says : 

Hardly any original thoughts on mental or social subjects 
ever make their way among mankind ; or assume their proper 
importance in the mind of even their inventor, until aptly selected 
words or phrases have, as it were, nailed them down and held them 
fast. 

And again : 

That the language may be fitted to its purpose, not only should 
every word perfectly express its meaning, but there should be no 
important meaning without its word. Whatever we have occasion 
to think of often and for scientific purposes, ought to have a name 
appropriated to it. 

Technical terms. — Just this is the function of all techni- 
cal terms in science. They are not the outcome of a scien- 
tist's delight in a display of erudition. It is not his wish to 
speak in a language other than that of the common man. 
But he has definite materials to differentiate out of the 
vague whole with which the common man deals, and to keep 
distinct when they have once been differentiated out, and 
this he can do only by marking them with a very specific 
tag. If he did not thus '' nail them down '' with a technical 
term they would not only slip back again for society into 
the vague lump of '^ the children of the dragon's teeth," but 
would soon lose their distinctness, even in the discoverer's 
own mind. When at his best he differentiates them out ; 
to hold them there he perforce must find for them an unam- 
biguous and adequate name. True, a science with an elabo- 
rate technical terminology may seem rather formidable to 



How we Keep our Ideas Clear iii 

the novice, but, if it is thereby made a trifle more difficult 
to acquire, it is certainly made more easy to retain, so that 
a technical terminology proves in the long run most economi- 
cal. In no field can men do exact thinking except where 
they keep their thoughts definite with exact language.^ 

Other tags than verbal. — It is, of course, true, as was 
hinted in our last chapter, that other tags than words may 
serve as the symbols around which our concepts may center. 
A mental picture of a typical member of the class, or an arbi- 
trary sound of one sort or another, or a certain twist of the 
head or attitude of the body, or even a particular crook of 
the finger, would answer the purpose. These would be con- 
crete nuclei, as well as words are. Indeed much of our think- 
ing is in just such terms. The lower animals have no verbal 
language at all, yet they probably hold more or less definitely 
in consciousness masses of experience characterized by a 
certain unity of meaning which are essentially concepts. 
These are doubtless tagged by some gross bodily attitude. 
Each sort of experience to which they are capable of giving 
meaning throws them into a certain muscular state, and 
conversely, when they are thrown into that muscular state 
the appropriate mental content is brought in, just as with 
us it is brought in by the word. For us, too, doubtless, many 
concepts are sufficiently tagged for our casual thinking by 
the same sort of gross bodily attitudes. Certainly many 
of them are carried by visual, auditory, motor, or other 
similar imagery — that is, by a picture, sound, or sense of 
movement that comes up before the '^ mind^s eye.^' In 
this the word may or may not be present in addition to the 
more concrete image, but certain it is that thinking can be 
carried on with other tags than the verbal. 

1 Teacher or student will see from this the importance of always closing 
an inductive study (one leading through examples up to a concept, say, of 
noun or a method of computing interest) with an appropriate technical 
term, rule, or law, and having this memorized. 



112 Human Conduct 

Superiority of verbal imagery. — Yet, while this is true, 
it is equally certain that the highest type of thinking is done 
with words as tags. As Lewis says, ^^ It is the power of 
thinking by means of symbols which demarcates men from 
animals, and gives one man or nation the superiority over 
others/^ When we daydream we do so mostly in such con- 
crete terms as those mentioned above, but when we set 
ourselves to serious, voluntary thinking we immediately 
descend (or shall I say ascend?) into verbal imagery. As 
we grow more mature the basis of our thinking is more and 
more words instead of concrete pictures. Indeed highly 
trained thinkers, such as able scientists, mathematicians, 
and philosophers, are able to find in their thought processes 
but very little of a sensuous image basis. They think almost 
entirely in verbal terms. Indeed they find a rich concrete 
imagery a handicap for serious and efficient abstract think- 
ing. Children and uneducated persons, on the other hand, 
think comparatively little in words and much in concrete 
imagery. 

Possibility that language may mislead thought. — But 
if words can be extremely valuable to us in our thinking, 
they can also be extremely dangerous. They tend, like so 
many of our intended servants, to become our masters. 
Normally we would mature our thoughts and then seek a 
word to tag them. But we hate to think and never do it 
until we must. Indeed it is probably not extravagant to 
say that many of us have done almost no thinking in our 
lives, and never intend to do any. Even when we say, ^^ I 
think so and so,'^ we are usually only appropriating what 
somebody else has thought out, not breaking pathways for 
ourselves. Instead of maturing thoughts and seeking lan- 
guage for them we let the language ripple through our minds 
and gather to itself whatever meaning fits its frame. We let 
the words, that is, lead instead of follow, and put ourselves, 
unconsciously to be sure, at their mercy. Says Bacon : 



How we Keep our Ideas Clear 113 

Men imagine that their reason governs words whilst, in fact, 
words react upon the understanding; and this has rendered phi- 
losophy and the sciences sophistical and inactive. 

Now it is bad enough for words to assume the role of 
leader in our mental activity, rather than servant, making 
us believe we are thinking when in fact we are not, but it 
is still worse when they do this leading badly, as they so 
often do. For, despite the bold front which they put up, 
they are really at heart very wavering and uncertain guides. 
As to this the famous old Englishman, John Locke, com- 
plains : 

Men having been accustomed from their cradles to learn words 
which are easily got and retained, before they knew or had framed 
the complex ideas to which they were annexed, or which were to 
be found in the things they were thought to stand for, they usually 
continue to do so all their lives ; and mthout taking the pains to 
settle in their minds determined ideas, they use their words for 
such unsteady and confused notions as they have, contenting them- 
selves with the same words other people use, as if their very sound 
necessarily carried with it constantly the same meaning. . . . 
This inconsistency in men's words when they come to reason con- 
cerning either their tenets or interests, manifestly fills their dis- 
course with abundance of empty, unintelligible noise and jargon, 
especially in moral matters, where the words, for the most part, 
standing for arbitrary and numerous collections of ideas not regu- 
larly and permanently united in nature, their bare sounds are often 
only thought, or at least very obscure and uncertain notions an- 
nexed to them. Men take the words they find in use among their 
neighbors ; and, that they may not seem ignorant of what they stand 
for, use them confidently, without much troubling their heads 
about a certain fixed meaning ; whereby, besides the ease of it, 
they retain this advantage : that, as in such discourses they are 
seldom in the right, so they are seldom to be convinced that they 
are in the wrong; it being all one to go about to draw those men 
out of their mistakes who have no settled notions, as to dispossess 
a vagrant of his habitation who has no settled abode. 

Ambiguity. — Certainly the ambiguity of words does con- 
tribute to the confusion of thought. Every one who has 



114 Human Conduct 

studied the history of philosophy, or even of science, knows 
how largely this is true. Cause has meant either that which 
drives a thing on by mechanical necessity, as an engine 
pushes or pulls a train ; or that which grounds a consequence, 
as the premises of a syllogism warrant the conclusion ; or 
that which supplies a motive to a voluntary agent, as the 
fact that a train is about to start induces the would-be 
passenger to run to catch it, etc. Idea and faith have 
each at least four distinct meanings. Rousseau, without 
knowing it, used nature in three different senses. Attempts 
to classify men as religious or irreligious have rested upon 
at least three different connotations of the word. Spinoza 
was characterized by one class of people as ^^ godless '^ and 
by another as ^' god-intoxicated,^^ not because they differ- 
ently understood his attitude but because God had different 
meanings for the two. 

Anarchists believe that government should be abolished. 
Their argument, in so far as they have any, is based upon 
the weaknesses found in concrete forms of government. 
But it is one thing to find all governments defective and quite 
another to find government as a principle at fault. It 
might even be true that every government on earth is intoler- 
ably bad and should be abolished, but if that were true it 
would still not follow that government should be abandoned. 
The anarchist has allowed himself here to fall into intellectual 
confusion because the word with which he tagged his concept 
is ambiguous. It is the tag really for two ideas, and because 
the external symbols for them have not been made distinct, 
the ideas themselves have got scrambled together. 

Right is another word that has led to unfortunate mental 
chaos. A young man will insist upon his '^ rights '' with 
an ardor due to a moral obligation. As a courageous gentle- 
man he feels it his business to help defend the right and he 
takes this assertion of his own rights to be a part of this 
campaign. He fails to see that the two are alike only in 



How we Keep our Ideas Clear 115 

the sound of the words which stand for them, but almost 
diametrically opposite in their real meaning. For the right 
places upon one chiefly not privileges but obligations. It 
calls upon one, in the face of his own selfish tendencies, to 
subordinate himself to the universal good. But his rights 
are his privileges, and to insist upon them is to assert his own 
private interests against those of the whole. Right appeals 
to his unselfishness ; rights to his selfishness. To permit 
these ideas to run together because the words are identical 
is too often to basely protect the one when one means to 
honorably champion the other. 

Individuality, freedom, vocation (as compared with avo- 
cation), church, law, moral, and many others, are illustra- 
tions of words that, by their doubleness of meaning, lead us 
into intellectual confusion. There is indeed no more fruitful 
and subtle source of deception than just this one. If we 
would keep our thoughts clear, it is absolutely necessary 
that we look to the words in which they are expressed. 
Carelessness in language will inevitably react upon the 
clarity of thought. If, for the sake of avoiding the appear- 
ance of stiffness, we permit ourselves to say freedom when 
we really mean spontaneity, or brief when we mean concise, 
or bad when we mean naughty, our thinking will soon be 
blunted to conform to the inadequacy of our speech. 

Restriction to literal meaning. — In a second way words 
may imperil thought — that is, by carrying a narrow mean- 
ing into a broader application. Metaphors are seriously 
subject to this danger. The figurative language of religion 
has reduced the religious ideas of many people to what they 
themselves would regard as absurd and impious if they ever 
stopped to think about the matter. Psychology speaks 
of ^^ the struggle of ideas, '^ and Physics of ^^ force ^' and 
''attraction,'^ when any scientist will tell you that the fact 
indicated is very different from what the word implies. 
The average man grossly misunderstands even the most 



ii6 Human Conduct 

rigorously scientific work because of the figurative manner 
in which the author is obhged to express himself, to say 
nothing of those writings and addresses that are made meta- 
phorical for literary effect. The imagery aroused by the 
language is so strong as to make us forget the difference 
between the real subject matter under consideration and the 
figure used to illustrate it. So subtle and persistent is this 
danger that Heine has been led to remark humorously, 
^^ May heaven deliver us from the evil one and from meta- 
phors.^^ 

Prejudice, — Again words may carry an unfair prejudice. 
These have been aptly called ^^question-begging epithets. '^ 
The very word, apart from any conviction its use may justify, 
is such as to prejudice the hearer in favor of or against a 
proposition. To call a scheme socialistic is to depreciate 
it in the mind of an auditor by the mere use of the epithet. 
To say that an opinion is heretical disposes of it, for too many 
people, without any consideration of its inherent truth or 
falsity. ^' Class legislation,'^ ^^ compromise measure, '^ ^^ dan- 
gerous and immoral doctrine, '^ ^' honest money,'' ^^ the 
people's cause," ^^ be a sport," — ^are a few out of the many 
phrases which unfairly beg a question. The expressions 
have really no content whatever. They can mean anything. 
They are merely used to reenforce what the speaker lacks in 
sounder arguments to drive home. Yet upon this empty 
jargon ^^ thought " rides to the goal which the speaker or 
writer desires. 

Conservatism. — And finally, words tend to handicap the 
progress of thought. For established conclusions there are 
fixed words and expressions. But thought can not remain 
on the same level. Yet its broader content it must express 
in the old words and the old phrases. Needless to say they 
are inadequate to it. The process is like putting new wine 
into old bottles, which, with this very application in view, 
we were warned not to do ^^ lest the bottles break and the 



How we Keep our Ideas Clear 117 

wine runneth out/' To a slight extent the difficulty is met 
by coining new technical terms. Yet but a very small frac- 
tion of the problem can be met in this way, for the bulk of 
our words must remain the same, while the bulk of our 
thoughts certainly should not be static. The full solution 
could be found only if thought were made to take the lead, 
and words were kept as servants to it. But remote indeed 
is that solution and perhaps never to be attained in this 
world. Nevertheless each can do his part to make himself 
what Aristotle held that man essentially is, but what ex- 
tremely few of us really show ourselves to be, — a rational 
animal, — by consciously keeping his own thoughts as free 
as possible from the obscurity and ambiguity which the 
careless use of words occasions. Ruskin says : 

Yes, and words, if they are not watched, will do deadly work 
sometimes. There are masked words droning and skulking about 
us in Europe just now . . . which nobody understands, but which 
everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, or 
even die for, fancying they mean this or that or the other of 
things dear to them ; for such words wear chameleon cloaks, — ■ 
*' ground-lion" cloaks, of the color of the ground of any man's 
fancy ; on that ground they lie in wait, and rend him with a spring 
from it. There never were creatures of. prey so mischievous, 
never diplomats so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these 
masked words ; they are the unjust stewards of all men's ideas. 
Whatever fancy or favorite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives 
to his favorite masked word to take care of for him. The word 
at last comes to have an infinite power over him, — you can not 
get at him but by its ministry. 

EXERCISES 

1. In what kind of symbolism do you suppose the deaf and dumb, 
who communicate with each other by the manual-sign method, do 
their thinking? Does that serve as well as verbal symbolism? 

2. How long do you believe you could have retained, in clear- 
cut fashion, what you learned in the last chapter about the nature 
and use of concepts if you had avoided the technical term, concept, 
or its equivalent ? 



ii8 Human Conduct 

3. Look up the distinction between the "denotation'' and the 
*' connotation" of a term, and apply the distinction to appercep- 
tion and perception as related to each other. Does the possession 
of these technical terms help you to do clearer thinking? 

4. What is the effect of substituting, in certain cases, the word 
*' swiping" for "stealing"? 

5. In a recent discussion of the doctrines of a certain educa- 
tional reformer one side always referred to him as an "agitator," 
while the other side always used the term "prophet." What effect 
would these words produce ? Was their use fair ? Why ? 

6. Show how confusion in thinking might arise from indefinite- 
ness of meaning in the following words : culture, good, democratic. 



CHAPTER IX 
HOW WE LEARN THE CAUSE OF THINGS 

Persistence of superstition. — A few years ago Prof. 
Fletcher B. Dresslar, then at the University of CaHfornia, col- 
lected some two thousand different superstitions current in his 
state. From this long list the following samples are selected : 

If you spill salt you will quarrel with a friend unless you throw 
some of the spilled salt over your left shoulder. 

If a tea leaf rises to the top of your cup you are to have visitors. 
If the leaf is soft, a lady ; if hard, a gentleman. 

If you plant corn when the oak leaves are as big as a rabbit's 
ears, there will be a large crop. 

If you let the fire die out while cooking, your husband will be a 
lazy man. 

If you roof your house in the decrease of the moon the shingles 
never warp nor turn up. 

It is good luck to carry a rabbit's foot. 

If you secretly rub a bean on a wart and then plant the bean, 
when it grows the wart will disappear. 

Stand behind a door and say "Sty, sty, get out of my eye" for 
fifteen times without taking a breath, and the sty will go away. 

If you wish on the first star you see at night your wish will come 
true. 

Looking at the clock on entering the school room is a sure sign 
one will be called on to recite. 

Prevalence of superstitious beliefs. — Of course many 
people quote these superstitions jokingly, but large numbers 
of persons firmly believe in them, and even those who would 
not confess to such belief still feel just a little uneasiness in 
disregarding them. Most of us are at the best like a certain 
French writer who wrote, ^^ I do not believe in ghosts, but 
I am afraid of them/' The gentleman who made the study 

119 



I20 Human Conduct 

referred to above concludes that as much as 44.9 per cent of 
all these superstitions are believed and that only 55.1 per cent 
are not believed in by the average man. Even intelligent 
people will assure you that if a rail fence is laid in the ^' down 
sign '^ it will sink into the ground, that shingles put on in the 
^^up sign'' will curl up, etc., and claim that their own ex- 
perience has abundantly demonstrated it. Says Dresslar : 

Engineers feel safer, gamblers run greater risks, and business 
men make investments, trusting to the power of a rabbit's foot for 
luck. When the Klondyke fever was at its height, a miner wTote 
back to his father in this wise : ** If you and the boys can kill any 
rabbits up in the hills, send the feet to me, and I will dispose of the 
lot in round figures. I never saw men press their luck as they do 
here. A gambler arrived from St. Louis over the Dalton trail, 
and knowing that he would find other gamblers, he brought along 
a dozen rabbits' feet and sold out the lot at $50 each." But the 
rabbit's foot is only one of a great many things used for the same 
purpose. 

In the same way people will permit themselves to be hum- 
bugged by fortune tellers or by mystery workers of one kind 
or another. They will pay twenty-five or fifty cents to be 
'^ faked,'' and go away feeling that they have had their 
money's worth. Mr. Dresslar says that in a recent num- 
ber of one of the most prominent newspapers of a very im- 
portant and metropolitan city of our country he counted the 
advertisements of no less than fifty different people adver- 
tising to " tell your fortune with a pack of cards " ; ^^ to 
find lost property by a lock of your hair " ; ^^ to cure witch- 
ery " ; ^^ to penetrate all the affairs of your life " ; ^^ to 
reveal all hidden mysteries " ; ^^ to find through the power 
of second sight investments that will make you a fortune " ; 
'^ to guide sporting men in games of chance '' ; ^^ to cure all 
diseases on earth " ; and ^^ to give correct information on 
the whole range of the unknown." 

Clung to even when disproved. — Nor is the most conclusive 
evidence sufficient to offset the hold of these superstitions. 



How we Learn the Cause of Things 121 

They are accepted merely upon hearsay, yet even when 
experience, if attended to, would disprove them they are 
still clung to. It is supposed, for example, to portend bad 
luck to have a black cat cross one's path. Yet black cats 
have crossed our paths many a time without any evil effect, 
but that fact has not broken down our belief in the super- 
stition. These cases of failure of the superstition to work 
out are merely overlooked, while attention is strongly cen- 
tered upon those few cases in which it does hold. Nor is 
this true only of the type of superstitions indicated above. 
It is likewise true of notions that we have about ourselves 

— about our ability, our good or bad luck, our open-minded- 
ness, our tact, and a thousand other matters — in which 
our attitude is so childishly uncritical as to deserve to be 
called a superstition. And the same thing is true of our 
attitude toward our friends, toward the institutions to which 
we belong, and toward our pet theories. Facts may flatly 
contradict these superstitions, yet we go on sublimely indif- 
ferent to these facts, still cherishing our old beliefs. 

Supersiition due to ignorance of test of truth. — In fact most 
people do not know explicitly how to proceed in testing a 
supposed truth. As Dresslar says : 

The popular notion of what constitutes scientific evidence is 
sadly in error. Great masses of the people have a very vague con- 
ception of what is meant by proof. When multitudes of people 
are willing to believe that bad luck follows directly on stepping over 
a broom, and are willing to evidence the fact by recalling instances 
where this was the case with them, what sort of an idea can they 
have of cause and effect? Here, as elsewhere, possible coincidence, 
interpreted by an expectant mind, suffices for a fundamental and 
an everlasting cause. Men are willing and eager to explain things ; 
but as yet few have ever stopped to consider what explanation 
really means. 

Miirs experimental methods for testing causal relations. 

— Now in this chapter we shall consider the methods 
of testing such supposed truths. We shall see how the 



122 Human Conduct 

scientist proceeds in assuring himself that a certain matter 
really is, or is not, the cause of a fact or group of facts. And 
these same laws of logical procedure which he uses to such 
great advantage we shall see that we can — and to an ex- 
tent do — use in our everyday affairs. But when we shall 
have made these methods explicit we shall be in a position 
to use them more effectively, for we can then employ them 
consciously, control them ourselves, and hence attain a 
much higher degree of certainty than would be possible 
with the haphazard methods of ordinary chance thinking. 

The methods of testing supposed causal connections which 
we shall set forth here were worked out by John Stuart 
Mill several generations ago, and are called Mill's ^^ Experi- 
mental Methods. '' They were, however, of course more 
or less unconsciously used by scientists and others long be- 
fore Mill's formulation of them. There are five of them, and 
we shall take them up and illustrate them in order. 

Method of agreement. — The first of these inductive 
methods is the simplest and hence the earliest to be used, 
both by the child and by the race. My little boy, three 
years of age, when asked what makes it rain replied, 
'^ the wind.'' How had he come to that conclusion? Why, 
plainly in this way : time after time he had found that the wind 
blew just before a rain. He had come in time to think of 
these as belonging together. Wherever he found the one he 
vaguely expected to find the other. Hence he took the wind 
to be the cause of the rain. Now the child's mode of reason- 
ing, in spite of the incorrectness of his conclusion, was really 
a legitimate method of thinking. From the fact that one 
thing is accompanied by another we may, under restrictions 
discussed below, conclude that the former is the cause of 
the latter. This first and simplest method of reasoning Mill 
named the Method of Agreement. It is a method which 
you all repeatedly use. One person after another who has 
studied the classics is found to be strong in the power of ex- 



How we Learn the Cause of Things 123 

pression. Naturally you attribute their facility in language 
to their study of Greek and Latin. You find that practically 
all the persons who have recently taken typhoid fever pur- 
chase milk from the same dealer. Hence you charge the 
disease to something in the milk. You learn that educated 
persons as a class are more successful than others. In con- 
sequence you attribute their success to something in their 
education. You recall that every time you eat peanuts you 
have indigestion. Therefore you lay the indigestion to the 
peanuts. Wherever you find two things going regularly 
together you take it that they belong together inherently. 

Scientific use of method of agreement. — Now the scientist, 
observing that this is one of the mind^s ways of getting at 
truth, brings this procedure under control. Instead of de- 
pending on chance observation, he deliberately gathers 
together a large number of instances which differ as much as 
possible from each other in all respects except the one that 
has been taken as the probable cause. If he is a botanist and 
wishes to learn whether it is essential to a certain plant to 
have its seeds attached in a particular way, he will collect 
several hundred of these plants, from as many different condi- 
tions as possible, and examine them. If he finds that all 
have the seeds attached in the way in question, he concludes 
that that mode of attachment is essential, and not accidental. 
If he wishes to learn whether the cause of an electric current 
in a cell is the difference of the plates, he will use as many 
different plates, and as many different electrolytes as pos- 
sible, keeping only the one factor constant that the plates 
shall be different. If he finds that a current is always given 
under these conditions, he concludes that the difference of 
plates is the only essential to an electric battery. If he 
wishes to assure himself that saloons are a cause of high 
criminal expense, he will choose for study a large number of 
towns from all parts of the country, and having, as nearly 
as possible, nothing in commoii Qxcept hquor hcense. If in 



124 Human Conduct 

all of these he finds criminal expenses high, he will feel justi- 
fied in attributing that fact to the saloons. The procedure 
is thus always to seek out many cases for testing one's sup- 
position, being careful that they vary so much among them- 
selves as to have but one feature in common. If, then, in 
all of them the effect is still present one may be pretty sure 
that the element that was the same in all the cases is essen- 
tial to it. 

Popular use of the method. — There is indeed no commoner 
method of clearing up our ideas than this one. If we sus- 
pect that success on the platform is favored by a large stature, 
or that a left-handed man has an advantage as a baseball 
pitcher, or that a young man who can sing well will be most 
in favor with the ladies, the first thing we will do is to count 
over the illustrative instances. It was true, we say, in this 
case, and in this case, and in this case ; it is therefore uni- 
versally and necessarily true. Nay, even all our concepts 
are built up by just this process. It is thus that we find 
out what elements are essential to them and what are not. 
Our minds run back over the experiences that we have had 
with the class of objects in question, and those elements we 
find common to all while the setting varies we fasten upon 
as the essence of the class. Those that do not remain con- 
stant w^e reject as accidents. We compare, that is, one with 
another, and that in which we find them all agree we abstract 
out and generalize as our class concept. And the same pre- 
caution which makes the scientists' conclusions so trustworthy 
also makes the everyday concept adequate — the precau- 
tion not to jump hastily at a result upon the basis of a few 
cases, but to rest that result on a large number of instances 
which have been so chosen as to vary sufficiently widely 
that they may represent justly and adequately the whole 
situation. 

Limitations of method of agreement. — But no careful 
thinker would stop with the Method of Agreement. It 



How we Learn the Cause of Things 125 

can prove anything if 3^011 only select your instances 
rightly. Nothing is easier than to prove that planting in 
the ^^ up sign '^ insures a good crop. You only need recall 
merely those instances where success has followed such 
planting and forget the rest. Red-headed people are un- 
usually irascible. To prove so note only those cases in which 
they are. Indeed often large numbers of instances can be 
marshaled that carry for the point a high degree of 
plausibility. Unbalanced concepts and groundless generali- 
zations come almost always from the careless use of this 
Method of Agreement alone. This method must, therefore, 
be checked by another, the Method of Difference. 

Method of difference. — In this, instead of finding a 
series of instances to which the supposed cause is common, 
you select one where that cause is present, and another, 
exactly like it in all other respects, where it is absent. You 
endeavor, that is, to make the two differ only in respect to 
the critical element. If, then, the effect follows where the 
supposed cause is present, and does not follow where it is 
absent, you are pretty safe in judging that the element in 
question is essential to the effect. If the child referred to 
above had not only recalled instances where the wind and 
rain occurred together, but had definitely tried to think of 
occasions where they were not together, he would not have 
taken the wind to be the cause of the rain. If the person 
who is justifying the efficacy of the '^ up sign '^ would seek 
for cases where a successful crop had followed planting in 
another sign, their necessary connection would soon be 
disproved. It is only because negative instances are not 
sought, nay are even carefully avoided, that so many shallow 
and indefensible generalizations can arise so easily and per- 
sist so long. 

If one were trying to prove that light is essential to the 
growth of a plant he could do so by setting one box contain- 
ing a plant in the fight, and another, exactly like it, in the 



126 Human Conduct 

dark. To determine that air is essential to the carrying of 
sound one rings a bell first in a jar containing air and then 
in the same jar with the air exhausted. To prove that 
water boatmen possess the sense of hearing the scientist 
Graber first dropped stones into a vessel, in which they were 
present, which had its bottom covered with mud, and in 
which, consequently, the dropping of the stones made no 
noise. Then he put a plate of glass over the mud, so that 
when dropped upon it the stones would make a noise, and 
found that in the latter case, but not in the former, the 
insects took flight, showing that they did possess the sense 
of hearing. 

Joint method of agreement and difference. — Ordinarily, 
however, particularly in our practical affairs outside the 
laboratory, we use a Joint Method of Agreement and Dif- 
ference by combining the two. We compare a number of 
instances where the supposed cause is present with a number 
in which it is absent. If the effect follows in all of the former 
series and in none of the latter we conclude that it is the true 
cause. To prove that the liquor business increases the taxes 
of a county, through increasing the court and police expenses, 
we take a large number of typical counties which have sa- 
loons and compare them with a large number of typical ones 
which do not have. If we find the expenses uniformly high 
in the former case and low in the latter we attribute the 
result to the liquor business. To test the social effect of 
Christianity we compare a large number of representative 
church members with a large number of representative non- 
members. To assure ourselves whether a certain kind of 
food, or a certain form of dissipation, is injurious to us, we 
compare our condition on a large number of occasions when 
we have indulged with our condition on many occasions when 
we have not, being careful always to select for the two sides 
instances as nearly as possible alike except for the presence 
or absence of the element under scrutiny. 



How we Learn the Cause of Things 127 

Concomitant variations. — Still a fourth method, however, 
is available to further strengthen our certainty. It is illus- 
trated by the result of several investigations into the influence 
of the use of tobacco upon success in school work. A repre- 
sentative inquiry, carried on by one of the high school boys 
among his schoolmates at Highland Park, Illinois, resulted 
in the following facts : 

Average grade of 77 boys who had never smoked . . . 84.5% 

Average grade of 24 boys who had quit smoking . . . 80.5% 

Average grade of 55 habitual smokers 76 % 

Average grade of 45 habitual smokers who had left school 69 % 

It showed that, on the average, success in school work varied 
regularly with the use of tobacco. As the cause of low stand- 
ing increased the effect increased, and vice versa. The 
two at every point varied together. Hence the use of 
tobacco was concluded to be a handicap to successful study. 
This method of reasoning the logicians call by the rather 
jaw-breaking name, — the Method of Concomitant Varia- 
tions, — that is, of sunultaneous or parallel changes. 

This method is used repeatedly, both in the laboratory 
and in everyday affairs. From the fact that the mercury 
in the thermometer rises and falls in exact accord with tem- 
perature changes we conclude that the change in tempera- 
ture causes the change in the length of the mercury column. 
If investigation shows that the number of deaths rises and 
falls concomitantly with the rise and fall in the humidity 
of the atmosphere, a most natural conclusion would be that 
the humidity is responsible. If the magnetic disturbances 
on the earth increase and decrease at the exact time, and in 
the exact proportion, as an increase or decrease in the num- 
ber and magnitude of spots on the sun, the magnetic storms 
on the earth may be legitimately attributed to the disturb- 
ance on the sun. Two independent elements may sometimes 
change at the same time ; but if they continually vary to- 
gether, always changing in the same proportion, each reach- 



128 Human Conduct 

ing its maximum or its minimum simultaneously with the 
other, we feel sure that their connection is not accidental 
but essential. 

Method of residues. — And finally we may use what is 
called the Method of Residues. This method was used by 
Archimedes when he demonstrated that the king^s crown 
was not made of pure gold. He weighed it in air and then 
in water, observing how much of its weight it lost. Then 
he calculated how much it should have lost had it been of 
pure gold, and discovered that there still remained some loss 
unaccounted for. This residual effect he could attribute 
to the only remaining admissible cause — the presence of 
some light alloy c By a like method the planet Neptune 
was discovered. Uranus was found not to move in the orbit 
which the attraction of the known heavenly bodies would 
require. It was seen that there must, therefore, be, as a 
remaining cause, some unknown body whose attraction 
could explain the remaining effect. The position of this 
required planet was calculated and the result was the dis- 
covery of Neptune. Similarly if one had an unusual attack 
of indigestion and were looking for its cause one would ex- 
pect to find it outside of those elements of which the effects 
were known to be otherwise. One would consider that it 
could not be the bread, or the potatoes, or the meat, for these 
he had eaten frequently and had experienced no such result. 
It must, therefore, have been due, one concludes, to the 
doughnuts, since they are the only remaining possible cause. 

The methods of clarifying your ideas which have been dis- 
cussed in this chapter are not, of course, new methods which 
you have never used before. You have used them all 
repeatedly. Everybody has. But if they are consciously 
recognized and brought under control, especially at certain 
critical times, they can be made much more effective in free- 
ing ideas from the chaos and confusion which usually charac- 
terize them. 



How we Learn the Cause of Things 129 



EXERCISES 

1. As you think back over your experience do you see that you 
have always been using the methods here described? What 
difference, then, could the study of this chapter make in your 
thinking ? 

2. The neglect of what factor particularly, do you think, is 
responsible for a person's clinging to a superstition which he 
could easily disprove? 

3. Can we be absolutely certain that the conclusions reached 
by the methods described in this chapter are universally true? 
What are the conditions under which this certainty will be greatest ? 

4. Do Mill's methods give us our start in finding our cause, 
or must we begin with the method of hypotheses described earlier? 
Illustrate. 

5. Describe the method by which you would test your supposi- 
tion that mathematics trains the reasoning powers. Which of the 
Experimental Methods have you proposed using? Show what 
precautions must be observed. 

6. Tell which method is used in each of the following examples 
(all taken from Hibben) : 

(a) If a beam of the sun's light is passed through a prism, a 
colored band nearly five times as long as it is broad results. Newton 
tried several experiments in which he varied the size of prism, and 
the quality of the glass ; he also passed the beam through various 
parts of the same prism, and tried other minor suppositions. But 
in all these cases there was the same color effect produced. 

(6) Hawksbee, in 1715, first noticed that by striking a bell in 
the receiver of an air-pump, the bell was heard when the receiver 
was full of air; but when the receiver was exhausted, no sound 
was heard. 

(c) Also it was found that as the air was gradually admitted into 
the receiver, the sound of the bell grew louder and louder. 

{d) With various kinds of polished metals, no dew is deposited ; 
but with various kinds of glass, having highly polished surfaces, 
dew is deposited. Therefore, the deposit of dew is affected by the 
kind of substances themselves. 

(e) Nitrogen obtained from various chemical sources is of uni- 
form density ; in 1894 Lord Rayleigh and Professor Ramsay, 
noting the fact that atmospheric nitrogen is about one half per 
cent heavier, were led to the discovery of a hitherto unknown sub- 
stance which received the name of argon, 

K 



CHAPTER X 

THE PITFALLS OF REASONING 

Euthydemus replied : And do j^ou think, Ctesippus, that it 
is possible to tell a lie? 

Yes, said Ctesippus, I should be mad to deny that. 

And in tellinga lie do you tell the thing of which you speak or not? 

You tell the thing of which you speak. 

And he who tells, tells that which he tells and no other? 

Yes, said Ctesippus. 

And that is a distinct thing apart from other things? 

Certainly. 

And he who says that thing says that which is? 

Yes. 

And he who says that which is, says the truth, and therefore 
Dionysodorus, if he says that which is, says the truth of you and 
no lie. 

Dangers in reasoning. — The above conversation, from 
the days of the Greek Sophists, shows how subject to subtle 
error are even the seemingly most exact forms of reasoning. 
Indeed, unless formal reasoning is carefully guarded it is 
likely to lead to as distorted and erroneous results as the 
loosest sort of unorganized thinking. Its ^^ since '^ and its 
^^- therefore ^^ give it a degree of plausibility that is hard to 
combat, and often carry for it a conviction to which its 
soundness does not entitle it. Almost anything can be 
proved with a show of logic. There is even a famous mathe- 
matical method of proving that one is equal to two. Now 
formal reasoning we neither can, nor would wish to, forego, 
but it is worth our while to know its pitfalls and to guard 

130 



The Pitfalls of Reasoning 131 

against them. This subject is, of course, too big, and in- 
volves too many technicahties, to be adequately treated 
here, and for a fuller discussion the reader is referred to text- 
books on Logic. Nevertheless it is hoped that some of the 
more serious pitfalls may be successfully pointed out here. 

MATERIAL FALLACIES 

Accident. — There is a famous old syllogism to this effect : 

What you bought yesterday you eat to-day. 
You bought raw meat yesterday. 
Therefore you must eat raw meat to-day. 

Another, illustrating the same fallacy, is as follows : 

Pine wood is good for lumber. 

Matches are pine wood. 

Therefore matches are good for lumber. 

Now these syllogisms both look plausible enough, yet 
one knows that the conclusion does not follow properly from 
the given facts — or premises as they are technically called. 
Why? For this reason : in the premise ^^ What you bought 
yesterday you eat to-day,'' one refers only to the essence of 
the material purchased — its general nature. One does not 
have in mind at all its accidental properties. That it is 
cooked or uncooked is a matter to which one's attention has 
not gone. In the second premise, however, ^^ You bought 
raw meat yesterday,'' the emphasis is upon the unessential 
feature that it was raw. Between the premises one's atti- 
tude has vitally shifted. The first premise hinges upon the 
essence ; the second upon an accident. In the second syllo- 
gism the same shifting takes place. Pine wood is good for 
lumber only in essence — when other conditions are normal. 
But matches do not represent an essential form of pine 
wood, but a highly accidental one. Here again the fallacy 
grows out of a shifting of viewpoint. This shifting from 
the essential to the unessential, or from the unessential to 



132 Human Conduct 

the essential, gives rise to what is called the Fallacy of 
Accident. 

Accident in popular reasoning, — Now it would be a matter 
of little consequence to know of this error if the fallacy were 
confined to such glaring cases as those of the above illustra- 
tions. But unfortunately it occurs constantly in the most 
subtle forms, and perhaps daily we are misled by it. We 
are urged to vote for Mr. P. because he is a Republican, and 
because Republicans should stand by their party. But 
when we admit that Republicans should stand b^^ their 
party we mean only so long as the point at issue is the essence 
of Republicanism. In this case, however, Mr. P. may be a 
notorious political boss, and his attitude may not be repre- 
sentative of the inner heart of the Republican Party at all. 
In the one premise the matter turns, then, upon the essence 
of Republicanism ; in the next upon a mere peculiarity of 
a member of that party. And thus in attempting to drive 
the conclusion upon us the Fallacy of Accident has been 
committed. 

Again we admit that students should be loyal to their 
schoolmates. But that means when conditions are normal. 
If the matter comes to turn, as it often does, upon the acci- 
dent that this particular schoolmate has been clearl}^ in the 
wrong, the general proposition no longer necessarily holds. 
To attempt to claim support under these abnormal condi- 
tions is to commit the Fallacy of Accident. 

Converse accident. — A similar error led to the former 
insistence upon every one^s studying Greek. A very few 
persons derived a high type of culture from this study — 
those who had the necessary temperament, and who could 
stay by the subject long enough to get into the spirit of it. 
But because it had proved good for them it was urged as 
good in general and for everybody, despite the fact that the 
premise upon which this conclusion rested represented an 
accidental and not a general condition of the study of Greek. 



The Pitfalls of Reasoning 133 

Between the premises the shift was made from the accident 
to the essence, just as in the cases cited above it was made 
from the essence to the accident. 

Composition. — There is a second fallac}^ into which we 
are all prone to fall. We may best understand it if it is 
approached through examples. European countries as a 
whole have always distrusted a democracy. They rest this 
distrust upon the fact that most voters are ignorant, and that 
hence the aggregate vote is an ignorant vote. But any one 
who has had anything to do wdth groups knows that one 
can pretty safely trust the conclusions of any fairly large 
number of men, provided conditions are normal. For 
some will be erratic in one direction while others are erratic 
in another. They will thus offset each other and will be 
characterized as a group by a quality that does not belong 
to any one of them individually. In like manner the verdict 
of a jury may be trustworthy, though that of each member 
taken separately would be highly untrustworthy. A mass 
of testimony, too, may be as a whole conclusive, even though 
all of its parts taken separately may be subject to legitimate 
doubt. Thus the ignorance of the whole voting population, 
or of the whole jury, does not follow from summing up the 
ignorance of its individual members, nor the untrustworthi- 
ness of the whole of the evidence from the untrustworthi- 
ness of its several parts. The whole has a character that is 
more than the sum of the parts. To assume the opposite, 
and to draw a conclusion regarding the whole merely by 
aggregating its several parts is to commit this second kind 
of fallacy — the Fallacy of Composition. 

Illustrations. — This fallacy is further illustrated by the 
stock arguments in favor of a high protective tariff. A 
high rate on wool is advantageous to the sheep raiser, a high 
rate on manufactured goods to the manufacturer, a high 
rate on beef td the meat packer, etc. Therefore, it is con- 
cluded, a high rate on everything at the same time would 



134 Human Conduct 

be an advantage to us all. This conclusion overlooks the 
fact that, while we might profit severally by these protective 
duties, they may be of no profit to us when all are taken to- 
gether, since what we would gain for ourselves w^ould be off- 
set by the higher prices which, in consequence, we would 
have to pay for what w^e purchased. 

Athletes sometimes commit this fallacy when they in- 
dulge individually in ^^ grandstand feats.'' As a matter of 
fact the most hopeless sort of team is that one in which each 
member attempts to ^^ star." Good team playing does 
not result from an aggregation of the spectacular feats of 
individual members, but from their subordination to the 
unity of the group. Whether in acting, or in thinking, or 
in feeling, every group is much more than the aggregate of 
its members, and whoever attempts to treat it merely as an 
aggregate inevitably fails in the undertaking. 

Division. — There is also a converse fallacy to this one of 
composition — namely, the Fallacy of Division, It is exactly 
the reverse of Composition. What is true of the whole is 
not necessarily true of the parts. From the fact that Con- 
gress passes a measure it does not follow that member B 
is responsible. If a town is boorish, Jones, who lives there, 
is not necessarily so. If an education as a whole is valuable, 
it does not follow that every one of the subjects studied in 
getting it is worth while. If a crowd is unreasonable, the 
conclusion is unwarranted that its members, when taken 
aside, will be. The parts are no more miniature representa- 
tions of the whole than the members of an animal's body 
are duplications of that organism. To assume that they are, 
and to attempt to pass from the whole to a conclusion about 
the parts, is to commit the fallacy of Division. 

Begging the question. — A sermon which I once heard 
illustrates a fourth fallacy. The sermon was based upon 
the text, ^^ All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is 
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for in- 



The Pitfalls of Reasoning 135 

struction in righteousness/^ and was intended to prove the 
authority of the Bible. The preacher's argument was that 
the scripture must be true, in every detail, because the text 
plainly says that all scripture is given by inspiration of God. 
Now, without passing any opinion upon the subject matter 
in question, it is clear that the preacher did not fairly prove 
his point. For he based his proof upon the authority of the 
text, and that the text was authoritative assumed the very 
authority which it was the preacher's purpose to establish. 
So he was merely going around in a circle. Had any one 
needed a proof for the conclusion he would not have found 
it in the sermon, since he would certainly not have admitted 
the premises (the starting point) of the preacher. 

Now this is typical of a great deal of reasoning. One 
assumes as a starting point the very thing which he is to 
prove, or something so nearly equivalent to it that it amounts 
to the same thing. This constitutes the fallacy of Begging 
the Question. It is committed either when one merely goes 
around in a circle, as our preacher of the above illustration 
did, or when one starts with premises that would not likely 
be accepted. Every one, in giving proof of a thesis, must 
rest that proof upon something which others are willing to 
admit. If he does not do so, his conclusion may legitimately 
be rejected. Any one has a right to ask about an advocate's 
premises two things : '^ Do they contain in another form 
what he is to prove? " or ^^ Do they assert what I do not 
regard as sufficiently well established, and am hence un- 
willing to grant? " If they do, the fallacy of Begging the 
Question may be properly charged. 

Non sequitur. — The fallacy called Non sequitur (it — 
that is, the conclusion — does not follow) results when 
one attempts to draw from premises a conclusion which 
they do not warrant. Thus, if one should hold that 
the ideal man does not need law, and should infer from 
that premise that laws and governments should be abolished, 



136 Human Conduct 

he would commit this fallacy. Similarly if he should 
argue that, because music or the classics are not com- 
mercially useful, they should be thrown out of the curricu- 
lum ; or that, because a theater provides rag-time enter- 
tainments, its doors should be closed, he would be guilty 
of the same error. The premises are not, at least without 
further elaboration, sufficient to justify the conclusion. This 
fallacy is very frequently committed, and we must all watch 
ourselves if we would keep free from it. 

Irrelevant conclusion. — A story of a youthful decision 
by Cyrus illustrates a sixth fallacy. A large boy, wearing 
a coat too small for him, accosted a small lad with a coat 
too big, and compelled him to give the too ample coat in 
exchange for the smaller one. A dispute arose and Cyrus 
was appealed to as arbiter. This future king decided in 
favor of the forced exchange. He argued that each now 
had a coat which fit him, and that consequently the exchange 
had been mutually advantageous. But the point at issue 
was not whether the exchange had been advantageous but 
whether it had been just — a very different thing. A wholly 
irrelevant conclusion had been palmed off as the one to be 
established. Such an argument, which does not squarely 
meet the issue, is called technically by the rather formidable 
name, Ignoratio Elenchi — that is, ignoring the point at 
issue. If you wish a simpler name you may call it the 
Fallacy of Irrelevant Conclusion. 

Illustrations, — This fallacy is very frequently committed. 
It is a common resort of a man who must defend a weak 
case. An attorney who is unable to convict a prisoner on 
the basis of the evidence may try to move the jury to an 
adverse judgment by picturing the awfulness of the crime 
with which he is charged. A candidate for office, instead 
of arguing his own fitness or describing his policies, will 
rest his case upon a bitter attack on his opponent. An 
attorney is said to have handed to the barrister a brief 



The Pitfalls of Reasoning 137 

marked, '' No case ; abuse the plaintiff's attorney.'' A 
speaker who lacks the sohd stuff to carry conviction will, 
in clever substitution, jolly the audience. A boy who has 
dishonored himself will justify his error by observing that 
other fellows do the same. A girl, charged by another with 
improper conduct, will reply, '' You're just as bad." Or, 
instead of giving proof of any point, one will appeal to 
authority, or to pity, or to popular prejudice. All of these 
arguments make no effort to establish the conclusion which 
the situation would require. They are about something 
altogether different, and win their way only by the dishonest 
expedient of turning attention from the point at issue. 
For this fallacy of Ignoratio Elenchi one can well afford to 
be continually on the lookout, both in his own thinking 
and in that of those with whose arguments he is obliged to 
deal. 

FORMAL FALLACIES 

All of the above fallacies are grouped together by logicians 
into one class. They all have to do with something in the 
content of the reasoning, and are hence called material 
fallacies. There is, however, a second class which is, his- 
torically at least, as important as the above, if not more so. 
They are the so-called Formal Fallacies — those which arise 
out of the grammatical '^ shape " into which the reasoning 
is thrown. Only four of them will be treated here. 

Illicit middle. — 

He believes that it is wrong for the capitalist to take profit from 
the laborer. 

The Socialists also believe this. 
He must therefore be a Socialist. 

Such a syllogism sounds rather convincing. It follows 

the analogy of the mathematical scheme, 

3 a equals 4 y, 
6 X equals 4 y, 
Therefore 3 a equals 6 Xy 



138 



Human Conduct 



in which we have all learned to have implicit faith. If, 
however, we apply this same form to a palpably absurd 
syllogism our confidence in the universal trustworthiness 
of conclusions thus reached is justly shaken. Such absurd 
syllogism would be the following : 

Men are bipeds. 
Birds are bipeds. 
Therefore men are birds. 

Why is it that this syllogism breaks down? It is be- 
cause men and birds, though both falling within the class 

of bipeds, need not neces- 
sarily fall together. If we 
picture the whole number 
of bipeds by a large circle 
and all birds and all men 
by smaller circles (see fig- 
ure 20), it becomes clear 
how both can belong to 
the same class without be- 
ing identical. One falls 
in one part of the class 
bipeds and the other, in 
another. Each of them 
comprehends only a part 
of the class to which both are referred, for when we say 
that all men are bipeds room is left for the fact that 
other things might be bipeds as well. If, however, we say, 

Men are bipeds, 

All bipeds are animals, 

Therefore men are animals, 

the fallacy can not appear. For in this case we speak in 
the second premise of all of the bipeds, and leave no such 
room for shifting as the first syllogism admits. Wherever 
you speak in both premises of only a part of the class to which 




Fig. 20. 



The Pitfalls of Reasoning 



139 



your other two terms are referred — the so-called middle 
term — you commit a fallacy. Where you speak in at 
least one premise of the whole of it you keep free from that 
error. Figure 21 diagrams the valid case. The fallacy 
here described is called that of Illicit Middle, also Undis- 
tributed Middle J that is, a 
middle term of which the / animals 

whole class is not used. 

Recall now the syllogism 
above : 



He believes that it is wrong 
for the capitalist to take profit 
from the laborer. 

The Socialist also believes 
that it is wrong for the capi- 
talists to take profit from the 
laborer. 

Therefore he must be 
Socialist. 




Fig. 21. 



Here, too, you will notice that in no case do you speak of 
all the persons who hold the opinion in question. When you 
say that Socialists believe so and so you leave room for others 
to do hkewise, and so do you when you say, '^ He thinks, 
etc.^^ The whole of your middle term is not used in either 
case, and you have, in consequence, committed the Fallacy 
of Undistributed Middle. Herbert Spencer fell into the 
same error when he argued that, as both society and bio- 
logical organisms grow, society must be a biological organism, 
and we always commit it when we reason after the manner 
that, as both Methodists and Lutherans baptize infants, 
they must be essentially the same. 

Shifting terms. — A fallacy closely related to this of 
Illicit Middle, but usually going technically under a differ- 
ent name, is committed when the middle term is taken in 
two different senses in the two premises. In any language 



140 Human Conduct 

in which a word may have two or more meanings, as is the 
case with our own, it is easy to shp into that fallacy, and 
the more so when the two meanings differ by only a slight 
shade. An illustration, where the fallacy is obvious, is this : 

No designing person ought to be trusted. 
Engravers are by profession designers. 
Therefore they ought not to be trusted. 

One involving the same error, but where it is a little more 
concealed, follows : 

The right should be enforced by law. 
The exercise of the suffrage is a right. 
Hence it should be enforced by law. 

Here it is still obvious that the word right is used in different 
senses in the two premises. We meet, however, many cases 
where the shift in meaning is so slight, and so surreptitiously 
made, as not to be easily detected and hence likely to mis- 
lead any but the most alert. 

Illicit distribution. — A third kind of formal fallacy is called 
Illicit Distribution; that is, improperly extending a term. 
It is illustrated by the syllogism : 

We Baptists are truly Christian. 

You are not Baptists. 

Therefore you are not truly Christian. 

In the first of these premises only a part of those who are 
truly Christian are spoken of. The term might include 
others as well. You could evidently say Methodists, 
Presbyterians, etc. are truly Christians without in the least 
disturbing this premise about the Baptists. But in the 
conclusion the whole class is involved. ''You are not any 
of the whole group.'' The extent of the term '' true Chris- 
tian '' has therefore been improperly increased from part 
to whole. But quite evidently no one is justified in drawing 
a conclusion about more than his premise has contained. 
Here is a similar example : ''All the Democrats voted 



The Pitfalls of Reasoning 141 

for the candidate, but, as John is not a Democrat, he did not 
vote for him.'' Also, '' The students in our school are all 
right ; but, as you are not a student in our school, you are 
not right/' The comment is unnecessary that a great deal 
of reasoning is of just this kind, though most of it is un- 
expressed in words. 

Negative premises. — And finally, a fourth formal fallacy 
is that of Negative Premises. If you say x is equal to 2/, 
and y is equal to 2;, you can evidently conclude that x is equal 
to z. In like manner, from the fact that x is equal to y, 
and y is not equal to ^, you know that x is not equal to z. 
But if you have it given that x is not equal to y^ and z is 
not equal to y, no conclusion whatever can be drawn. The 
fact that they are both not y does not inform you whether 
they are the same or different. Similarly, if you say that 
the French are not Germans, and that the British are not 
Germans, you can not tell from the premises whether or not 
the French are British, any more than you could tell whether 
or not two women are friends from the fact that both are 
enemies of a third woman. 

Nevertheless, this fallacy of negative premises we are 
often tempted to commit. From the fact that the Progres- 
sives are not in sympathy with the Democratic administra- 
tion, and that the Republicans also are not in sympathy 
with it, we take them to be essentially one, and, forsooth, 
hope for their combination. Likewise, we reason that Anar- 
chists are against the present governmental scheme, and so 
are Socialists, and that hence they must be about the same ; 
or that two pupils who both hate Latin will sympathize 
with each other in liking commercial subjects. A thing 
is made what it is primarily by its positive qualities, and 
no agreement between terms as to the positive attributes 
can be inferred from their mutual exclusion of any other 
term or attribute. Of the two premises upon which the 
conclusion is based at least one must be positive. 



142 Human Conduct 

FALLACIES IN INDUCTIVE REASONING 

In many other ways, too, which can only be mentioned 
here, our reasoning is subject to error. We may not care- 
fully observe the facts upon which our thinking is based. 
We may pass blindly over many relevant ones, selecting 
only those which tend to prove our point, or we may, out of 
our prejudices, so apperceive our facts as to seriously distort 
them and thus vitiate our results. A few casual observa- 
tions may serve us as a basis for a wide generalization. Such 
hasty generalizations are illustrated by an estimate of a 
man's character based upon a day's observation, or by those 
marvelous] accounts of ^^ The West '' which, grounded upon 
a few days' experience in one or two towns just beyond the 
Mississippi, the hero of travel narrates to a roomful of ad- 
miring auditors. Or we may permit our emotions, or our 
personal interests, or our idiosyncrasies, or convention, or 
imagination, to mislead us. Or we may conclude, as nearly 
every one is disposed to do, that because an event occurred 
just before another the former was the cause of the latter. 
'^ Post hoc ergo propter hoc,^^ we reason to ourselves. The 
ship which started on Friday met an accident ; hence start- 
ing on Friday, we falsely reason, was the cause of it. Your 
nose stopped bleeding after 3^ou tied a red yarn string around 
your finger ; hence that treatment was efficacious. A change 
in weather followed a change in the phase of the moon ; 
hence the moon's change occasioned the change in the 
weather. And in this same way we do much of our reason- 
ing where the fallacy is not so obvious, and deceive ourselves 
and others in consequence. 

Summary. — Quite evidently our reasoning is as much 
in need of watching, if we would safeguard ourselves against 
bias and confusion, as we have already found apperception 
and conception to be. 

In order to fix a little more definitely the facts of this far 



The Pitfalls of Reasoning 143 

too hasty survey of fallacies the following (incomplete) 
outline is appended. 

I. Material Fallacies. 
(a) Accident. 
(6) Composition, 
(c) Division. 

{d) Begging the Question. 
(e) Non Sequitur. 

(J) Ignoratio Elenchi, or Irrelevant Conclusion. 
II. Formal Fallacies. 

(a) Undistributed Middle. 
(6) Shifting Terms. 
(c) Illicit Distribution of a Term. 
{d) Negative Premises. 
III. Fallacies of Inductive Reasoning. 
(a) Inadequate Observation. 
(6) Hasty Generalization. 
(c) Fallacies due to Individual Prejudices. 
{d) Post hoc ergo propter hoc. 

EXERCISES 

1. Besides the ones illustrated in this chapter the following 
are important fallacies : look them up in a textbook on Logic : 
illogical Obversion or Conversion ; Accent ; Denying the Ante- 
cedent, or Affirming the Consequent ; Imperfect Disjunction ; and 
Complex Question. 

2. Do you see any advantage in pointing out fallacies by name? 

3. Tell which fallacy is committed in each of the following (all 
taken from Hyslop). 

(a) All valid syllogisms have three terms. 

This syllogism has three terms. 

This syllogism is therefore valid. 

(6) Mathematical studies undoubtedly improve the reasoning 
powers ; but as Logic is not a mathematical study we may conclude 
that it does not improve the reasoning powers. 

(c) I will not do this act because it is unjust ; I know it is un- 
just because my conscience tells me so, and my conscience tells 
me so because the act is wrong. 

{d) He who calls you a man speaks truly; he who calls you a 
fool calls you a man ; therefore he who calls you a fool speaks truly. 



144 Human Conduct 

(e) The Quaker asserts that if men were true Christians and 
acted upon their religious principles there would be no need of 
armies ; hence he draws the conclusion that a military force is 
useless, and being useless is pernicious. 

(/) Whoever intentionally kills another should suffer death ; 
a soldier therefore who kills his enemy should suffer death. 

{g) The people of the country are suffering from famine, and 
as A, B, C, are people of the country, they must be suffering from 
famine. 

(Ji) Every incident in the narrative is probable, and hence the 
narrative may be believed since it is probable. 

4. Give examples of fallacies in inductive reasoning. 



CHAPTER XI 
CONTROL OF CONDUCT THROUGH IDEA 

An experiment with mental telepathy. — Some English 
scientists had been investigating mental telepathy — the 
supposed power of direct thought transference whereby one 
mind can affect another at a distance in such a way as to make 
the second mind think the thoughts of the first. They had 
put two persons at opposite ends of a corridor, had set one 
of these to thinking intently to himself about some number, 
and had kept an exact record of the frequency with which the 
other subject could guess the number of which his partner 
was thinking. They had found a much larger number of 
.ight guesses than chance alone would explain, and had con- 
cluded that there must be some sort of transfer of thought. 
' But two Danish experimenters, Hansen and Lehmann, were 
unconvinced. They believed that the communication had 
been through the ordinary physical means and not through 
some occult psychical ones — that in spite of himself the 
active subject had somehow expressed his thought in words. 
To test this hypothesis they resolved to focus the sounds 
made by the thinker, if there really were any, and thus 
strengthen their effect upon the receiving subject. And, 
sure enough, when they put the two subjects at the foci of 
two focusing mirrors they found the number of right guesses 
so greatly increased that they could no longer doubt the 
fact that the thought had been transferred in the ordinary 
way — by means of articulate sounds. The fact was that 
the thinker, in spite of his sincere attempt to obey instructions 

L 145 



146 Human Conduct 

not to whisper, was doing so involuntarily with every expira- 
tion of breath from his lungs. As he thought the number 
intently he automatically set his vocal chords and organs of 
articulation in such a way as to express it, and the air 
breathed out with every expiration was enough to make slight 
sounds. When focused these could be heard and uncon- 
sciously interpreted even better than before. 

Other evidence of motor nature of ideas. — This experi- 
ment is only one of many which show how closely idea is 





Fig. 22. 

The figure on the right is the graph traced unconsciously by the hand 
of a subject watching another make the drawing on the left. (Taken, by 
permission, from Stratton's Experimental Psychology and Modern Culture.) 



related to act. The discovery of this close relation is one of 
the great achievements of modern psychology. To cite 
further illustrations, if one rests one's hand upon a plan- 
chette — a very easily moved writing table — and then 
thinks intently of some object in a certain direction, his 
hand will unconsciously and involuntarily move in - the 
direction of the object. If he thinks of drawing a certain 
figure, or watches some one draw it, he will unintentionally 
trace its outline. If he speculates upon the weight of a 
body, his muscles will grow tense as if to lift it. It is upon 



Control of Conduct through Idea 147 

this tendency of every idea to run out into a muscular move- 
ment that the possibiUty of ^* mind reading ^' rests. This 
is really not mind reading at all, but muscle reading. In 
the game the subject is required, while holding the hand of the 
operator, to think intently of the place where he has hidden 
an object. The so-called ^^mind reader/^ claiming to have 
read his thoughts, '^ leads ^^ him to the place where it is 
concealed and finds it. The feats which can be accomplished 
in this way are almost beyond the layman ^s belief. In the 





Fig. 23. 

Another graph made under conditions similar to those of Fig. 22. Part of 
the movement is direct imitation, part reversed. (From Stratton.) 

Psychological Laboratory of the University of Wisconsin 
this abihty was developed in a young man, through training, 
to such an extent that one could hide a pin anywhere in the 
city and this young man could find it, the only condition 
being that some one who knew where it had been hidden 
should accompany him and think intently of the whereabouts 
of the pin while the seeker held his arm. There is, indeed, 
no special mystery about this. It is the attendant himself 
instead of the seeker who unintentionally does the leading. 
His thinking of the place where the object is concealed mani- 



148 Human Conduct 

fests itself in movements of the hand which the operator 
is holding, and by skillfully interpreting these, he picks out 
his way. The attendant's mental state, in spite of his 
caution, is expressing itself in action. 

Even when consciousness does not manifest itself in some 
such external way it still has its motor effect. Studies 
with the plethysmograph and the pneumograph show that 
the distribution of the blood, rapidity of the heart beats, 
and the character of the breathing are affected by mental 
activity. There is besides doubtless an influence upon 
glandular action, and certainly a change in tension through- 
out the entire muscular system. If we could get at all the 
motor elements involved — subtle as well as obvious — the 
psychological generalization that there is no mental state 
without its corresponding motor side would doubtless be 
completely verified. 

All ideas dynamic. — The motor tendency of ideas is 
evidenced at every turn. Only in rare cases do we, even as 
normal adults, stop to consider whether or not we shall act 
as we do. If we see a lead pencil on the ground we auto- 
matically stoop to pick it up. When we sit down to the table 
the general idea of taking our meal is sufficient to start us on 
the necessary detailed activities. The thought of hitting 
at the ball itself sets off the muscular efforts to do so. The 
recognition that it is class time starts us on our way. Even 
when we have long deliberated upon a bit of conduct our 
decision gets carried into effect merely by the favored 
idea's ultimately dominating consciousness unopposed. We 
hesitate only as long as neither alternative can get undis- 
puted sway. As soon as one gets undivided possession of 
our consciousness it projects itself right out into the conduct 
to which it points. The idea itself is motor. If only the 
right idea is implanted with sufficient firmness and predomi- 
nance the desired conduct will be directly and inevitably 
forthcoming. Professor James says : 



Control of Conduct through Idea 149 

We may then lay it down for certain that every representation 
of a movement awakens in some degree the actual movement which 
is its object. . . . Consciousness is in its very nature impulsive. 
We do not first have a sensation or thought and then have to add 
something to get a movement. Every pulse of feeling is the corre- 
late of some neural activity that is already on its way to instigate 
a movement. 

Our sensations and thoughts are but cross sections, as it were, 
of currents whose essential consequence is motion, and which have 
no sooner run in at one nerve than they are ready to run out at 
another. The popular notion that consciousness is not a fore- 
runner of activity, but that the latter must result from some super- 
added ''will-force," is a very natural inference from those special 
cases in which we think of an act for an indefinite length of time 
without action taking place. These cases, however, are not the 
norm ; they are cases of inhibition by antagonistic thoughts. . . . 
Movement is the natural immediate effect of feeling, irrespective 
of what the quality of the feeling may be. It is so in reflex action, 
it is so in emotional expression, it is so in the voluntary life. . 

Conduct follows attention. — And so, whatever has lodged 
itself in the center of consciousness is dangerously (or perhaps 
happily) near to expression in conduct. The problem of 
controlling action therefore reduces itself to the more specific 
one of controlling thought — of directing attention. '^ To 
think/' says Professor James, '^ to sustain a representation, 
is the only moral act.'' If we can keep our attention fixed 
in healthy directions — upon ends which embody our ideals 
— right acts will follow as a matter of course. On the other 
hand, if attention goes to matters which are for us temptations 
to evil, the giving of the attention is the beginning of the 
act itself. If the act does not at once follow, it is only be- 
cause some counter idea is yet present near the focus of 
attention to block the free egress of the motor impulse which 
the idea is tending to launch. And just as soon as this 
inhibiting idea weakens for a moment — just as soon as it can 
be coaxed or argued into some sort of temporary lethargy — 
out into the unfortunate conduct shoots the victor idea. 



150 Human Conduct 

And so the essential thing is to get attention away from 
the undesirable end. It is useless to keep thinking about the 
matter and yet trying, by direct repression, to fight down 
the tendency to yield. Your safety lies in forgetting the 
temptation rather than in openly resisting it — in replacing 
it in consciousness by other ideas which point in a dif- 
ferent direction — in meeting the temptation, that is, by 
substitution. 

Self-control through substitution. — This is, of course, not 
easy to do, for all the laws of association of ideas are likely 
to be working to recall repeatedly this unfortunate idea to 
mind, until you have become so worn out by its continual 
pecking that you indulge it to get rid of it. Often, however, 
a substitute troupe of ideas can be brought in by force of will 
to expel the intruder. You can voluntarily launch yourself 
upon a new course of thought, and hold 3^ourself to it long 
enough to enable it to get entire possession of you. Or 
you can sit down at your desk and begin at least the motions 
of studying, with the assurance that these motions, if seriously 
carried on, will soon launch you into absorbing study. 
Or you can take down an interesting book for reading, espe- 
cially a novel of the idealistic type, and turn to its most 
sobering and inspiring chapters. Or, if all of these expedients 
fail to dispel the dangerous idea, you can take a walk in the 
open air. There is no other time, perhaps, at which one^s 
thinking tends to be so healthy and idealistic as when he is 
walking briskly along a relatively unfrequented street or 
through an open country road. From such a walk you are 
almost sure to come back with the old temptation completely 
dislodged from consciousness, and with your mind sufficiently 
full of ambitious projects to carry you through many succeed- 
ing hours. 

Imitation. — This fact that consciousness is d3mamic also 
explains why one^s surroundings have such an influence 
upon him. Psychologists have come to recognize that we 



Control of Conduct through Idea 151 

are all continual imitators. Nor is this true, as was once 
supposed, only of children and of the weaker adults. We all 
imitate — genius as well as dolt — and we can scarcely say 
that those on one level of intelligence do it more than those 
on another. There is indeed nothing in our environment, 
to which we give attention, from the swaying of a pendulum 
to our hero's mode of thinking, that we do not tend to 
reproduce in our own conduct. This is plainly due to the 
fact that the matter attended to gets into the center of 
consciousness and, since all ideas are motor in character, 
is at once disposed to express itself in conduct. 

Suggestion. — When this objective presentation of a 
plan of action becomes somewhat more articulate and 
ideational in character we call it suggestion. Such suggestion 
wields a power in conduct that we seldom realize. Only a 
small part of our conduct is really of our own making; 
the great part of it follows suggestions from others. For 
these suggestions lodge ideas in our minds, and such ideas 
drive us right on into the acts to which they point. Of course 
we are not aware that these ideas have been induced from 
without. We believe that we have constructed them from 
within. Indeed otherwise we would resent them as an 
intrusion upon our individuality. It is just this respect in 
which control through suggestion differs from that through 
compulsion. Whoever can skillfully employ suggestion, 
especially indirect or, as Professor Ross calls it, '^ slant-wise '^ 
suggestion, can determine the action of his fellows often with 
as great certainty as if he held absolute authority over them, 
and with infinitely less friction. 

Influence of Suggestion. — So the environment in which 
we are placed is sure to be a big factor in our lives. We 
can not escape its effect. Every day we are influenced by 
some sort of suggestion. Even where we appear to have 
resisted external contributions we are still affected by them. 
We may reject advice that is given us, yet it is still present 



152 Human Conduct 

in one way or another as a factor in spite of us when we come 
to a decision. A friend offers us a cigar, or proposes a walk, 
or suggests a prank, and we agree, feeUng perfectly free in 
the matter. Yet we are not as free as we think; it is the 
idea, for the presence of which our friend was responsible, 
that is working itself out in our conduct. Our opinion of a 
person or place, our appreciation of a work of art, our 
political or other partisan attitudes, and our estimate of 
ourselves, are far more largely colored by suggestion from 
others, and by imitation of them, than we usually realize. 
Indeed a surprisingly large number of our acts we can trace 
back directly to some suggestion which lay concealed in 
consciousness until a fitting occasion called it forth, and 
if we could get at the subtle factors that are involved we 
should doubtless be able to trace many more to such outside 
influence. The writer, at least, has been able time after 
time to find the source of certain important acts in his life 
in suggestions received from others. At the time of their 
performance they seemed perfectly free and original, yet 
reflection showed clearly that they had come into the mind 
in consequence of an earlier suggestion and had almost 
automatically slipped out into conduct. 

Persistent suggestion. — And that one is greatl}", though 
subtly, influenced by suggestion, is the more true if such 
suggestion is persistently recurrent. No matter how strong 
one may be, he can not withstand suggestion that is re- 
peatedly impinging upon him. Sooner or later he will yield to 
it. It is, for example, said, by liquor license advocates, that 
no one need enter the saloon on the corner unless he wishes. 
But that is untrue. It stands there as a constant suggestion. 
Every time one passes that way it puts into his mind the 
idea ^^ take a drink. '^ This he may or may not be able to 
quell for a time but, if he is young and plastic, or if he is on 
the ragged edge of sobriety, at some moment when physical 
weakness makes him unusually suggestible, or when some 



Control of Conduct through Idea 153 

friend at the critical time reenforces this standing suggestion 
with the invitation, '' Come, let's have a glass/' the idea 
thus thrust upon him will work itself out, and he will be 
by the bar with the cup in his hand almost before he knows it. 
Similarly no one can put himself in a position where he is 
subject to the repeated invitation to '^ have a smoke," 
^^ come and have a good time," etc., without being in the most 
serious danger of ultimately acquiescing. He may resist a 
dozen times, or fifty times, but ultimately he is almost sure 
to accede. The idea, from having been so often in con- 
sciousness, ultimately gets a hold, and when once in posses- 
sion there its pathway to action is short and easy. 

Influence of environment. — But whether the situation 
be articulate in the form of words or merely mute model, it 
will, especially if persistent, have its subtle effect. It is 
next to impossible to have any kind of conduct battering 
upon one's senses without one's ultimately assimilating it 
as his own. Since, then, environment so largely makes a 
man, it is extremely important to select a favorable one. One 
should be careful about the companions with whom he 
associates. If they are slovenly, he will soon, in spite of 
himself, become slovenly too ; and if they are tidy he will 
find himself pohshing up. If they are loose morally he will 
gradually relax his moral fiber ; and if they have high ideals 
his will rise to meet theirs. He will ultimately be religious 
or irreligious, industrious or lazy, gentlemanly or boorish, 
according as his constant companions are one or the other. 
He may not rise quite as high or sink quite as low as they, 
but it is next to impossible for him not to become practically 
like his chums. 

But there is another side to the matter. Imitation and 
suggestion are both mutual processes. If others give to you 
you give also to them. And herein lies at once your privilege 
and your responsibility. Here you are creator. It is not 
alone for yourself that you act, Whether you wish or not 



154 Human Conduct 

your conduct leaves its tint upon the world about you. It is 
useless to say that men need not imitate you. They will do 
so and nothing on earth can stop them — not even them- 
selves. If you walk a little more erectly, your fellows about 
you will unconsciously straighten up as you pass. If you 
are tidy in dress and exact in habit, it will have its effect 
upon others. If you are courteous, and intelHgently pa- 
triotic, and honest, these virtues will not remain yours alone. 
If you are sanely pious, you will stimulate the religious 
nature of your comrades. If you have high ideals, those of 
men about you will rise a little to meet yours. If you have 
the spirit of loyalty and honor, it will radiate and set the 
souls of others to vibrating in unison with it. And if you 
are the opposite — well, we may pass that by. It is a sad 
recollection that your conduct will be just as inevitably 
effective there as on the other side — and indeed even 
more so. 

EXERCISES 

1. Why does one tend to "talk to himself" as he thinks? 

2. Do you find that your mental behavior, in getting out of 
bed in the morning or in making a high dive, conforms to that 
described in the text as normally constituting a decision? 

3. One often expresses what is in his mind "before he thinks.'* 
Why is this? 

4. Is there such a thing as "mind cure"? How could 
there be? 

5. Can auto-suggestion (that is suggestion to oneself) influence 
one's power in action? How and to what extent? 

6. Is there any evidence in fortune telling of the power of 
suggestion? Does one ever himself help to fulfill the fortune 
teller's prophecies? What responsibility does this place upon a 
fortune teller? 

7. What is the safest way in which to avoid yielding to a temp- 
tation ? 

8. Is imitation a mark of weakness? Does it necessarily 
replace originahty? What does Stratton mean by saying that 
"Imitation is a mere schoolmaster to bring us to originality"? 
(See his Experimental Psychology and Modern Culture, Ch. XI.) 



Control of Conduct through Idea 155 

9. In the effort to avoid imitating a model that we despise 
is it well to fight against the tendency to imitate or to treat such 
temptation lightly? What is the effect of an effort to fight our- 
selves away from imitating a model ? Why ? 

10. Ernest, who has meditated much upon the ideals expressed 
in the ** Great Stone Face " (Hawthorne's story), and who has long 
hoped for the coming of a man who should resemble the face, is 
found at last himself to be the man. Is there any psychological 
justification for this? Do one's ideals come to express themselves 
in his face? How? 



CHAPTER XII 
THE FACTORS IN PERSONALITY 

Personality susceptible of analysis. — One of the most 
potent factors in success in any career that keeps a man 
before the pubHc is personahty. It makes no difference how 
great a man's technical quahfications for his work may be, if 
he is lacking in personahty the degree of success to which he 
can attain is limited. Without an effective personal pres- 
ence he is almost inevitably destined to some subordinate 
position in which he can supply materials to some one else 
who has the necessary front to control his fellows. In all 
work one has a great advantage by possessing a good person- 
ality, but in any position of leadership it is indispensable. 

Now it is a popular superstition that personality is some 
mysterious, unanalyzable entity which one just happens to 
possess. It is supposed to come to those who somehow have 
the special favor of the gods. But this is not the case. 
Personality can be readily analyzed into specific factors. 
Moreover, at least some of these traits can be effectively 
cultivated. It is therefore important to see to what specific 
factors a strong personality is due. 

Physical appearance. — The first element that we shall 
mention is physical appearance. Anything that rivets 
attention strongly upon the person in question gives to 
him, in so far, the power of control, for we have already seen 
how attention subjects us to the thing attended to. And 
among the things that first enlist attention, and thus gain 
for one the center of consciousness, is something striking 
about his physical make-up. He may be unusually large 

156 



The Factors in Personality 157 

or vigorous in physical stature. It is a well-known fact that 
this gives him prestige among men. Or he may be strikingly 
handsome. Or, on the other hand, he may have some pecu- 
liarity of facial structure or expression. Or he may wear 
long or oddly combed hair. If one were to make count he 
would doubtless be surprised at the large proportion of 
pubHc men — especially magicians or '' fakers '' who are 
largely dependent for success upon a semi-hypnotism of 
their audience — who are characterized by some sort of 
exceptional physical traits. 

Dress. — One^s dress, too, is a factor. The shabbily 
dressed man makes a bad impression as a rule ; conversely, the 
well-dressed man strengthens the favorable impression which 
he makes by the correctness of his clothing. Indeed noth- 
ing will cause a professional man loss of public respect more 
quickly than slovenliness in dress. Of course one does not 
strengthen his personality by being faddish in this respect — 
though under certain conditions even this may help him to 
make his point — but dress good enough to attract favorable 
notice is no small factor in giving one that confidence in him- 
self, and securing for him that confidence from others, which 
is so important an element in the power to control. 

Health. — Good health, too, is an important factor. 
Professor Chancellor advises school superintendents to 
cancel even important engagements rather than appear at 
them in weakened physical condition. He also urges them 
to be careful about their rest, their recreation, and their 
bodily exercise, so as to keep in prime physical condition, 
contending that physical freshness and vigor is one of the 
most important considerations in a superintendent's main- 
tenance of his personal prestige. And certainly this contention 
is true. The strength of one's personality fluctuates to a very 
large extent with the fluctuation in his physical condition. 

Decisiveness. — After physical appearance and condition 
we may mention decisiveness as a factor in personahty. To 



iS8 Human Conduct 

waver, to make a decision one minute, the next minute reverse 
it, and perhaps the third minute go back to the original 
position, will destroy any person's ability to lead. The most 
successful men make it a rule to decide an issue once for all. 
Thereafter it is only necessary to remind them of how they, 
have earlier committed themselves on this matter and their 
old decision is accepted. I do not mean to say that the 
strong man will never change his mind, for when new evidence 
comes up he certainly will stand ready to do so. Consistency 
is the bugbear of only little minds. But the man with the 
qualities of leadership will not, out of lack of courage or mere 
change of mood, waver from one decision to another. From 
the standpoint of the maintenance of a leader's prestige even 
a bad decision is better than no decision at all. 

Poise. — Again poise is essential. There is a quiet, 
dynamic kind of waiting which the man of strong personality 
knows how to exercise. When, as presiding officer over a 
noisy meeting, or as teacher of a class that has become for 
the time disorderly, it is his function to restore calm he does 
not begin to shout in an excited voice, but reinforces his 
simple signal for order with a forceful period of waiting. 
But he does not wait in a flabby, passive manner, for during 
such waiting the group would be without a head, but with 
muscles tense and an expectation shown in his whole attitude 
which gives to the crowd an effective suggestion of attention 
to business. The noisy teacher or presiding officer, or even 
the noisy member of a group engaged in conversation, 
only makes the group more noisy. On the other hand, there 
is a compelling power in a well-controlled voice and a quiet, 
dignified manner. 

Indeed whether one is deaHng with a group or with single 
individuals there are frequently times when '' silence is 
golden.'' The man whose speech in the assembly carries 
most weight is not the one who speaks most frequently. 
It is the man who restrains himself until the psychological 



The Factors in Personality 159 

moment in some great crisis has arrived, and then speaks 
concisely but to the point. He who is ratthng off on every 
occasion soon becomes a laughing stock, and his utterances 
lose all power of influencing men. In private deaHng, too, 
there is often power in silence. The non-committal man 
retains his strength because he does not betray his vulnerable 
points. One does not know how to take him. The very 
mystery of his taciturnity subdues one. On the other hand, 
the talkative person betrays, by his chatter, his petty weak- 
nesses and subjects himself to attack and to easy defeat 
through those channels. 

Sense of humor. — In this connection may also be men- 
tioned that feeling for proportion and fitness which we call 
a sense of humor. Any one who is to deal effectively with 
his fellows must see large things as large and small things 
as small. He may not take too seriously incidents of only 
transient significance. Thus a teacher does well to close his 
eyes to some things which go on but which really carry no 
disciplinary dangers in them, and we all need to learn to 
appreciate a joke that has been turned against us, or to 
minimize the petty thrusts which we sometimes get. A 
good-natured laugh is by far the best answer to many an 
argument. By not becoming offended at these little sallies, 
but, rather, by manipulating to turn them back good- 
humoredly upon the aggressor, one can often make an asset 
out of what would otherwise be a heavy liability. 

Self-confidence. — Another indispensable element of 
strong personality is self-confidence. Until it learns differ- 
ently the world takes a man at his own estimate of himself. 
It is impossible for that man to inspire confidence in others 
who does not have confidence in himself. Of course over-con- 
fidence — conceit — will not strengthen but rather weaken 
one^s influence over others, yet a reasonable measure of 
even this will carry one a considerable distance. But he 
who has real merit, so that he can sustain a bold front, and 



i6o Human Conduct 

also that self-confidence necessary to induce him to put up 
the front, has a combination of qualities almost certain 
to carry him to success. But without both of these he is 
practically sure to end in ignominious failure. 

Belief in value of message. — Closely related to self- 
confidence is belief in the value of one's message. Demos- 
thenes was made a powerful orator by his intense interest 
in inducing the Greeks to expel Philip from their country. 
Many a man has remained flabby and without influence 
until some cause, in which he had supreme faith, took hold 
of him, when he became possessed at once of a new force- 
fulness. An agent can sell his goods best if he thoroughly 
believes in them. Indeed, in any cause a man can put up 
the most persuasive argument only when he is wholly con- 
vinced that his cause is just. 

Extraneous elements. — And finall}^ there are certain 
extraneous elements that enter as factors into personality. 
Among these are noble birth, wealth, or important position. 
Men possessed of these get a hearing attentive and sym- 
pathetic far beyond what the intrinsic merits of their message 
would warrant. Or the fact that one comes from a distant 
country or from a large city may give him at first a certain 
power over men. ^^ A prophet,'^ we were long ago told, 
^' is not without honor save in his own country. '^ And finally 
even unpleasant notoriety may give a person attractive power, 
as witness the tendency of theatrical companies to employ 
persons who have had part in some spectacular scandal. 

The secret, in short, of personality is largely to attract 
and hold attention and to inspire confidence. Some of the 
elements which enter into the ability to do this, like a large 
stature or noble birth, are beyond the individuaFs control 
and hence due to accident. Others, however, like health, 
dress, decisiveness, are within one's control and, through 
cultivating them, one can do much to strengthen his per- 
sonality. 



The Factors in Personality i6i 

EXERCISES 

1. Explain why persons who are greatly lacking in some of the 
characteristics mentioned above as assets are yet strong in per- 
sonahty. 

2. What is the relation between tact and personality? 

3. Strong personality doubtless makes for success. Conversely, 
does success tend to strengthen personality? How? 

4. What can one do to cultivate the self-confidence which 
strong personahty demands? 

5. What is the effect of small mannerisms upon personality? 
Of physical defects? Are these insurmountable obstacles? Illus- 
trate. 

6. Is it well for one to teach one's first school, or serve one's 
first pastorate, in his home community? Why? 

7. Is it true that, from the standpoint of the maintenance of 
prestige, a bad decision is better than no decision at all? What, 
according to your observation, is the effect of wavering? 

8. Discuss the relation of *' conceit" to personality. 

9. Has one a right to argue for any cause in which he does not 
believe? If so, under what conditions? 

10. To what extent is one indebted to fortune, and to what 
extent to his own will, for his personality? 



M 



CHAPTER XIII 

I 

THE EFFECTIVE USE OF THE MEMORY 

Memory obeys laws. — One day, when talking to my 
class, I had occasion to use the name of Horace Bentley, a 
character in Winston ChurchilFs novel, ^' The Inside of the 
Cup/' Although I had been reading this book only a day 
or two before, and although I knew this name perfectly well, 
I could not at the time recall it. Several hours later it 
spontaneously came to me when I was no longer searching 
for it. This sort of experience you have all doubtless often 
had. The name of a friend, a date in history, a mathe- 
matical formula, or some object that you were to get down 
town, you could not at the time — to your very great embar- 
rassment — recall. Later, when you no longer needed it, 
perhaps in the very midst of some conversation, the thing 
suddenly shot up into consciousness. Now why is this? 
What sort of faculty must the memory be that it can act so 
capriciously ? 

As a matter of fact it is not acting capriciously at all. 
Indeed, there is no function of the mind more obedient to 
exact laws than the memory. And it is just because it is so 
completely governed by laws, from which it can not at your 
convenience break away, that it sometimes so stubbornly 
refuses to do your bidding. 

Association explains recall. — You can get a glimpse of 
what these laws are if you inquire under what conditions 
an idea is recalled to mind. If you are trying to recall a 
forgotten mathematical formula — as, for example, the rule 
in Algebra for raising a binomial to any given power — you 

162 



Use of the Memory 163 

may first think where, approximately, it is in the book, then 
recall the chapter in which it occurs, picture the page on 
which it is developed, try to recollect who recited on it in 
class, call to mind something the teacher said about it, and 
so on until one of these ideas brings up along with it either 
the whole formula or at least its first term. When you have 
this first term it can usually bring up the second, and then 
the rest of the formula. Similarly, if you are trying to recall 
a name, you think over a number of names w^hich you feel 
to be nearly like it, recall where you last saw the person who 
owns the name, what some of his peculiarities are, where he 
lives, who his friends are, and what you have heard them 
say of him, in the hope that the desired name will be tied to 
one of these ideas and hence brought into your mind by it. 

The fact, then, which makes it possible to get back a 
forgotten idea is its association with other ideas. Every 
experience that you have ever had which is capable of 
being recalled, is tied up with one or more other experiences, 
and if you can get one of these with which it is associated 
you can recall the one desired. If it stood alone it would be 
as good as non-existent, for there would be absolutely no 
means of bringing it back again into consciousness. Hence 
what you are doing in your effort to recollect is running over 
the ideas which you think may be connected with it. 

And the same thing explains spontaneous recall. When I 
recalled the name of Horace Bentley it was probably because 
I had just used the name, Jeremiah Bentham, or even the 
Christian name, Ben. If you suddenly find yourself think- 
ing of a conversation once held with some friend, you will 
probably find that this friend was suggested by some passer- 
by who somewhat resembled him, or by some sentiment that 
came into your mind which was analogous to one expressed 
by him, or by some house or book or person which, in your 
thought, is connected with him. It is an interesting process 
sometimes to stop and consider how you came to be think- 



164 Human Conduct 

ing about what just then engages you. You will find in 
every case that you were led up to it by unbroken steps — • 
except where external occurrences gave a new direction to 
your thoughts — and that always the next idea came to 
mind because it was in some way associated with the 
preceding. 

Kinds of Association. — Similarity. — The ways in which 
ideas may be thus associated are really only a few. In the 
first place things that are similar tend to be associated in 
mind. The tower on City Hall in Philadelphia will almost 
certainly call up the Washington Monument, if you have 
gone up into both, because they are alike in being high. A 
strange face may call up a face of a friend which in some 
respects resembles it. One poem may suggest another be- 
cause they express similar sentiments. 

Contrast. — Again things that are strongly contrasted are 
likely to be associated. If you have seen an unusually short 
man, and then meet an exceptionally tall one, the image of 
the former will not unlikely be brought to mind. The idea 
of a selfish and wicked man is not only likely to suggest 
other wicked men, but just as likely to bring to your mind 
one of exactly the opposite character. But really this law 
of contrast is only another form of that of similarity. For 
the tall and the short men are alike in being extremes in 
size, and the wicked man and the good one resemble each 
other in being interesting character specimens. And so in 
general every case of contrast is really a case of underlying 
similarity. 

Contiguity. — And, finally, objects which are contiguous 
(that is, next to each other) are likely to be associated. This 
is the most important law of association and is called the 
Law of Contiguity. If you meet two men at the same time 
the idea of one is likely thereafter to call up that of the other. 
Similarly if you experience two things at the same place — 
whether at the same time or at different times — they tend 



Use of the Memory 165 

to be connected in your mind, so that when you later think 
of the one you are not unhkely to think of the other also. 
Hence contiguity^ either in time or in space, tends to produce 
association. 

But this is really a superficial way of putting this law. As 
a matter of fact it is not because the objects are together in 
the external world that they become associated. It is 
because they are thought together. The objects as such 
may be at the ends of the earth in space, or centuries 
apart in time, yet if you think one immediately after the 
other, and think them in relation to each other, they get 
associated in your mind, so that one will ever after tend to 
recall the other. Thus if you think together the name, 
William the Conqueror, and the date, 1066, either one of 
these will thereafter tend to bring into mind the other. The 
essential thing about the Law of Contiguity is, then, that 
the mental states representing the two terms occur together. 

Contiguity the fundamental law. — But when one looks 
at the matter in this way it is evident that all the laws of 
association reduce really to this one law of contiguity. We 
can easily see that similarity reduces to contiguity. When a 
strange face recalls by similarity that of a friend, it is because 
you have been dwelling upon those features about the face 
which are identical with those of the friend — the nose or the 
forehead or the walk that is just his. But these features have 
always been thought together with the rest of the make-up of 
your friend — his name, character, etc. — and, by the law 
of contiguity that things previously thought together call 
each other up, of course bring in these other features and 
give you the image of your friend. Out of the City Hall 
Tower you separate height; but this you have thought along 
with the Washington Monument and, following the law of 
contiguity, the monument is called to mind. So in the last 
analysis the one fundamental law back of association, and 
hence back of memory, is the law that states of mind that 



1 66 Human Conduct 

have once occurred together tend to be connected and to 
call each other back into consciousness. 

Explained by structure of brain. — A few generations ago 
that was as far as psychologists could go. They only knew that 
somehow ideas were associated, but did not know why. But 
to-day we know the cause. We have learned that it is 
in consequence of the structure and activity of the brain, 
upon which memory, as well as the other faculties, depend. 
Some acquaintance with this brain structure is so funda- 
mental to a knowledge not only of association and memory, 
but of all other mental functions as well, that we shall stop 
long enough to examine it. I must warn you, however, 
that it will carry us a little out of our way and will prove 
somewhat complex. But when we have once got it we can 
come back to our discussion of memory with the ability to 
understand it very much better than would be possible 
without the interruption. 

Localization of cerebral functions. — Did you ever hear 
the statement that the brain consists of some ten billion cells 
and that each of these cells is capable of holding one idea ? 
I did, long ago, and was foolish enough then to believe it. Of 
course it is true that there are probably as many cells as 
that, but it is by no means true that an idea can reside in 
each single cell. For if you consider what an idea consists 
of, you will find that it is no such simple thing as this crude 
theory presumes. Take for example the idea of an orange. 
It has in it — has it not ? — an element of color, and to 
image that we must use the visual aspect of our thinking. 
It is three dimensional and of a certain size, and that 
we appreciate at least partly in the muscular terms of 
reaching for it and around it. It has a certain touch and 
weight. Its meaning involves some notion of its taste and 
smell. And finally when we think it we have a certain 
tendency to pronounce its name. It is all these different 
elements running together that make up the idea of an orange. 



Use of the Memory 



167 



Now that these elements can not all reside in a single cell 
is shown by the fact, which experimental psychologists have 
discovered, that different parts of the surface of the brain 
are given over to appreciating these different attributes. A 
certain small area of the brain is specialized for receiving 
visual sensations, and whenever it is active for any cause we 
get the visual elements of experience. Another is specialized 
for taste, another for the muscles of the arms, etc. How 
the brain is divided up for these various functions the follow- 
ing figure will clearly show. 







CtUfn 



V% cjre^ frist 



^^. 



/^^O 
^f^ 







Fig. 24. 
Localization of the cerebral function in the human brain. 



The parts of the brain given over to these special functions 
are on its surface. And a wonderful bit of mechanism is this 
surface of the brain. It is a layer of gray matter about one 
eighth of an inch thick covering the whole brain. It is 
made up of nerve cells and is so important that nature has 
given to us just as much of it as she has been able to find 
room for. In order that this outer gray layer — the cortex 



1 68 Human Conduct 

— may be as extensive as possible it is deeply convoluted 
(folded) so that its area is amazingly large considering the 
size of the organ which it covers. How it is possible for 
so large an area to cover so small an organ you can easil}^ 
picture to yourself if you recollect how large an area of 
paper or cloth can be used up by plaiting it. 

Nerve fibers. — It is then on specific areas of this cortex 
layer of the. brain that the activities take place that give 
us the elements of experience. One area, as said above, 
gives us visual sensations, another taste, another smell, etc. 
To think orange, then, it takes not one little cell, but a half 
dozen or more different areas working together (if not indeed 
the whole brain), each contributing those aspects for which 
it is fitted. But these areas are widely separated from each 
other. How do they work together to form one idea? They 
are enabled to do so in consequence of the character of the 
interior of the brain. This is composed of a white mass 
which, upon close examination, is found to be made up of 
numberless fibers which lead out from these cells on the 
cortex to different parts of the brain or body. Of these 
fibers there are three sets. One set leads from the cortex 
of the brain out to the various organs of the body — the 
eyes, the ears, the arms, the legs, etc., and are the ^^ telegraph 
wires '' which carry messages between the brain and these 
outer organs. A second set leads from one side (or hemi- 
sphere) of the brain to the other side, for the brain is divided 
into a right and a left hemisphere by a deep fissure, and these 
connecting fibers enable the two halves to cooperate. But 
a third — and for our purpose here the most important — 
set leads from one area on the cortex to another. These are 
the ^^ association fibers ^^ and they connect every part of 
the brain with every other part, so that there are no two 
spots which can not be related by association pathways 
broken through these connecting fibers. 

Hence when we think of the orange spoken about above, 



Use of the Memory 169 

not only is the cortex in the several parts of the brain in 
action, but these several active parts are connected together 
in their activity by the appropriate association pathways. 
And it is doubtless the activity along this whole system of 
pathways that gives us our idea of orange. And thus every 
idea has its own system of cells and pathways, the activity of 
which produces it. Stir this system to action in some way 
and you can not help getting the idea. Conversely, have 
the idea and the pathways must perforce be in activity. 

Neutral basis of association. — Here, then, to return to 
our discussion, we have the explanation for the law of con- 
tiguity in association. Of two ideas that are thus associated 
each has its own system of pathways in the brain. But 
when they had been thought together these pathways had 
made connections — had opened into each other — perhaps 
as two neighboring river systems might break communicat- 
ing channels between them. Whenever thereafter mental 
activity is aroused in the one it tends at once to spread into 
the other system and set it in action, thus calling forth the 
associated idea. You have thought Jones and Smith to- 
gether once. In so doing you have opened into each other 
the brain tracks that condition each idea. Next time you 
think of Jones, the activity thus engendered in the brain 
system appropriate to Jones, will pass over into that system 
appropriate to Smith and give you at once a mental rep- 
resentation of the latter. 

Without doubt the association of ideas is thus complex, 
consisting of many interpenetrating brain pathways. But 
for the sake of simplicity psychologists are in the habit of 
speaking of this connection between ideas as if it were by 
but a single pathway. For the sake of convenience we 
shall adopt this conventional way of expressing ourselves; 
but when pressed for the fuller truth we should, of course, 
return to the more complicated account of the paragraph 
above. Ideas, then, in this simple way of putting it, are 



170 Human Conduct 

associated by reason of the fact that a neural (nerve) path- 
way has been opened between the two sets of brain centers 
which respectively condition them. Excite the one and the 
energy at once runs over this pathway and arouses the other. 
Thus ideas that have once been in experience can be 
brought back again into consciousness any number of times 
through the instrumentality of other ideas to which they 
are bound through association tracks. 

Memory conditioned by association pathways. — Now 
memory is nothing more nor less than this possibility of 
recall of past experiences through such association. Every 
experience not only makes brain pathways but leaves those 
behind for possible future use, just as the folding of paper 
or the running of a stream of water over the land leaves 
effects after it. And so you see that memory has a physical 
basis. Ideas do not themselves lurk somewhere in mind 
when you are not thinking them. All that you have is 
sets of brain tracks which were once used together in a certain 
way, and which have remained in the brain capable of being 
again brought into the same sort of use. When they are 
thus again aroused to activity you get once more in con- 
sciousness the same experience which originally broke the 
pathways. This experience you can recognize as belonging 
to your own past and thus you have memory. Says Betts : 

As memory is the approximate repetition of once experienced 
mental states or facts, together with the recognition of their belong- 
ing to pur past, so it is accompHshed by an approximate repetition 
of the once performed neural process in the cortex which originally 
accompanied these states or facts. 

And so there are two conditions about memory which 
determine its goodness or badness. These are (1) those 
conditions which have to do with the making and keeping 
of the pathways that constitute the physical basis of 
memory, and (2) those conditions which have to do with the 
recall of what is retained. 



Use of the Memory 171 

CONDITIONS OF RETENTION 

Retention of pathways. — Since memory is dependent 
upon brain pathways, it is clear that the deeper and more 
persistent the pathways the better the memory, other things 
being equal. But, since the brain is a plastic organ, its 
material is rearranged as time goes on, so that pathways 
once made tend to get more and more closed up, and hence 
less and less capable of effective use. It is true that they 
never get completely obliterated. No matter how long a 
time may elapse, nor how many other pathways may run 
across it, every channel once formed leaves some trace of 
itself. And so we never absolutely forget anything that 
has once been experienced. Indeed there are on record some 
amazing cases which show that persons still had retained, 
and were able to reproduce under exceptional conditions, 
what had to all appearances been long ago forgotten. But 
while it is true that we never absolutely forget anything, yet 
it is certain that normally all of our experiences gradually 
fade away for us. As the old philosopher, John Locke, says : 

Pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colors, and, un- 
less sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear. . . . The memory 
of some men is tenacious even to a miracle : but yet there seems 
to be a constant decay of all our ideas, even of those which are 
stuck deepest and in the minds the most retentive ; so that if they 
be not sometimes renewed hy repeated exercise of the senses, or 
reflection of that kind of objects which at first occasioned them, 
the print wears out and at last there remains nothing to be seen. 

Law of forgetting. — Experimental psychologists have 
carefully measured the rate of forgetting, and all agree that, 
after the first few seconds, we all forget very rapidly at first, 
and progressively but more slowly as time goes on. The 
first of these psychologists, Ebbinghaus, found that, with very 
difficult matter to memorize (namely, nonsense syllables), the 
following percentages had been forgotten at the intervals 
named : 



172 Human Conduct 

Interval % Forgotten Interval % Forgotten 

20 minutes 41.8 2 days 72.2 

1 hour 55.8 6 days 74.6 

8 hours 64.2 30 days 78.9 

1 day 66.3 

Another investigator, who used similar methods and got simi- 
lar results, found that after 120 days 97.2 % of the once 
thoroughly memorized nonsense syllables had been forgotten. 
Other investigators, working with ordinary matter, such as 
we frequently memorize, found that the same law holds, 
only that we forget such matter somewhat less rapidly. 

Difference in retentiueness. — There is, however, as Betts 
says : 

A very great difference between brains as to the actual possibility 
of recall through them. Some brains are ** like wax to receive and 
like marble to retain*'; with them every little fact which enters 
experience is kept seemingly without effort and recalled at will. 
These are the brains in which great possibilities reside in the way 
of an efficient memory, and which, if rightly used, will prove a 
priceless boon to their possessors. Other brains receive impres- 
sions much more slowly, but retain well what has been fully given 
into their keeping. Much study and many repetitions may be 
necessary in order to get the facts well established, but once com- 
pletely in mind they are there to stay. These brains are of the 
steady, plodding kind, so far as the memory is concerned, but will 
do their possessors faithful service if they are well trained. Still 
other brains receive impressions but slowly, and retain them poorly. 
These brains belong to those who must pore over the lesson for a 
long time, no matter how faithful the work and efficient the methods 
of study, and from whom — more discouraging still — facts slip 
away easily, even after they have once been mastered. Heroic 
effort will be required to make up for the handicap which such a 
brain is to its owner. 

Laws of retention. — Professor James vigorously contends, 
too, that ^^ this native retentiveness is unchangeable.'^ 
Nature has blessed some of us above others in this respect, 
and we must make the best of our handicap. Psychologists 
pn the whole agree with Professor James. If, then, we would 



Use of the Memory 173 

improve our memories it must be done by an intelligent 
observation of the laws of memory — by acquiring sound 
methods of study — rather than by strengthening our 
physiological retentiveness. What, then, are these laws, 
and what must we do to use them most effectively ? 

(1) Vividness. — The first of these is the Law of Vividness 
— the law that, other things being equal, the more vivid the 
impression which an event makes the better will it be re- 
membered. That which makes a vivid impression plows 
deep pathways through the brain, and of course, such path- 
ways persist better, and function more surely, than meager 
ones. Old Thomas Fuller quaintly says : 

First soundly infix in ihy mind what thou desirest to remember. 
What wonder is it if agitation of business jog that out of thy head 
which was there rather tacked than fastened ? Whereas those no- 
tions which get in by violent a possessio will abide there till ejectio 
fir may sickness, or extreme old age, dispossesses them. 

Any one who wishes to impart some fact so that it will 
be remembered must be sure to take advantage of this law. 
There are many devices to which one can resort to make his 
point emphatic. If he is a teacher or public speaker he may 
reenforce his words with gestures. The points which he 
wishes especially to have remembered he may make vivid by 
a special intonation of voice or by pauses. Or he may dwell 
long upon them, repeating them, amply illustrating them, 
reenforcing them with emphatic language, or warning the 
hearer of their importance. Or he may bombard the audi- 
tor's mind with them through all the sense avenues. Thus 
the modern teacher, in teaching a date, or the spelling of a 
word, may first tell it to the pupils, then write it on the board 
for them to see, — perhaps with its more important parts in 
colored crayon, — have the pupils say it over in concert, and 
finally have them write it several times. Any speaker, too, 
does well to use the blackboard freely while he talks, so that 



174 Human Conduct 

what he says may appeal to the eye as well as to the ear. 
What is thus made vivid in its first impression has a good 
chance of being retained. 

Attention. — From the standpoint of him who is to do the 
remembering there are several specific things that help 
to make for vividness in the impression, and hence for perma- 
nence of retention. One is attention. That to which you 
give strenuous attention makes a strong impression upon 
you, and hence a lasting one. On the other hand, that to 
which you give indifferent attention makes but a feeble 
impression and soon slips away from you. Loisette, who for 
years sold the secret of his memory system at a high price, 
had as one of his fundamental principles to '^ train the in- 
tellect to stay with the senses,^' that is to learn to give atten- 
tion to what you would remember. Indeed unless you are 
able and willing to concentrate attention upon what you are 
to learn you might almost as well not undertake to learn 
it at all. 

Interest and health. — Closely related to attention is 
interest. What you are vitally interested in you can retain ; 
what you are indifferent about has a very poor chance of being 
assimilated. Again, health is a factor. No faculty of mind 
responds so quickly to changes in health as does the memory. 
Indeed under such slight derangement as hunger memory 
has been shown to fall to as little as 20 per cent of its normal 
efficiency. Home says : 

Whatsoever quality of native retentiveness is ours by birth- 
right is diminished in poor health and tends to reach its upper 
limit of effectiveness in good health. We all know how much better 
we can remember in good health than in sickness, and how the 
events of an illness go from us. Thus indirectly, if not directly by 
practice, we can avail ourselves of whatsoever degree of retentive- 
ness nature has granted us. We despise our heritage of retentive- 
ness when we solicit ill health by poor food, overwork, lack of 
exercise, bad air, improper clothing, and anxiety. In vain do we 
neglect physical demands and expect mental returns. 



Use of the Memory 175 

. . . Avoid brain fatigue, particularly before it is to be sub- 
ject to any trial of memory. In fatigue the brain cells may shrink 
to half their normal size, and in this condition our associations are 
fewer in quality, slower in revival, and incoherent as related to 
each other. . . . Though avoiding brain fatigue, it may be ob- 
served that moderate intellectual exercise keeps up the tone of 
the brain and is better than disuse for the associative processes. 
A good memory, a good working brain, not so much demands in- 
frequent long vacations as frequent short ones, of which the nightly 
sleep is the best evidence and illustration. 

Vividness at recall. — ^And just as vividness is essential 
for making the original impression strong, so it is also essential 
for maximum efficiency in recall. It is said that under some 
grave danger minute details of one's past life often flash before 
one which under other conditions it would be impossible 
to recall. Dr. Carpenter tells of an illiterate German woman 
who, under the stress of fever, was heard quoting correctly 
many long sentences in Latin, Gfreek, and Hebrew. Upon 
investigation it turned out that, at the age of nine, she had 
heard an old minister, in whose house she stayed, recite 
these passages — to her entirely meaningless — as he walked 
back and forth through his room. They had made some 
impression upon her, and, in her illness, she was able to re- 
produce them on account of the high nervous pitch into which 
her fever threw her. It has often been observed that 
amateur players remember their parts better on the night of 
the entertainment, when they are keyed high on account of 
the excitement of the occasion, than they do in practice. 
And so alertness is essential at the time of recall as well as 
at the time of making the impression. If one is indifferent 
or fatigued, or ill, his efficiency in recalling what he really 
knows is very greatly impaired. Hence the wisdom of 
keeping in the best of bodily and mental condition when 
one is about to be subjected to some severe memory test, 
such as taking an examination, delivering a speech, or 
giving court testimony. Frances Gulick Jewett says : 



176 Human Conduct 

I have two college friends who practice opposite methods of 
study and have opposite experiences when examination day draws 
near. One is calm and happy — "Nothing but examinations to- 
morrow," he says, " so I'll go to the woods this afternoon and see 
how things are growing." The other is filled Avith anxiety. " You 
see it's examination to-morrow," he says, " and T have not a moment 
to spare. I'm afraid I'll have to study till midnight and even then 
I don't know how I'll get on. It always seems to be such a matter 
of luck." 

One can not afford thus to go to a memory trial tired 
out. The slowness with which the memory works when 
benumbed by fatigue more than offsets what one can learn 
during the last few extra hours. 

(2) Recsncy. — The second law to be mentioned is the Law 
of Recency. Other things being equal, what was last in 
mind is most readily recalled. When a fact has been but 
recently in experience the brain pathways which condition 
it are fresh and open, and it is easy to haul it back 
again through these into consciousness. None of us can 
trust those memories which, for long periods, have not 
been freshened up. Hence the importance of making a 
review^ of our facts shortly before we intend to use them. 
The effective teacher looks over each lesson before he goes 
to his class. The public speaker finds it wise to go again 
over his notes at the last moment. The amateur entertainer 
seizes the last chance for a final rehearsal. Subject, of course, 
to the condition about fatigue mentioned above, one who 
wishes to be sure of his ground should, on the basis of this 
law of recency, take a final glance at his matter just a short 
time before being obliged to give it. 

(3) Repetition, — And third is the Law of Repetition. Other 
things being equal, the idea that is most frequently recalled 
into experience is remembered best. Hence the importance 
of review. The Jesuits used to say that ^^ repetition is the 
mother of studies,'' and conducted their schools on that 
principle. They reviewed at the beginning and at the close 



Use of the Memory 177 

of each lesson, gave the last day of each week, the last 
month of each year, and the last two years of the course to 
systematic review. In consequence of so much repetition 
the Jesuits had the most thorough schools in all history. 
Repetition is absolutely essential to memory. It is very 
seldom that one can get a thing well enough at the first 
sitting to retain it. Yet in this we all suffer from an un- 
fortunate illusion. At the moment a matter seems so 
clear and so well impressed on our minds that we feel sure 
we have it ; yet the next month, or even the next week, when 
we attempt to recall it, behold, it has vanished. The only 
way to be sure of retaining it is not to depend upon the 
original learning, however thorough that may have been, but 
to bring it up for frequent review thereafter. It is certainly 
uneconomical to spend a great deal of time in learning a bit 
of history, or a set of theorems in geometry, and then let 
them slip again out of mind, when from twenty-five to fifty 
per cent as much additional time spent in occasionally 
reviewing them would fix them in memory. To learn a 
thing once and then let it go at that is to cease the battle 
just as the enemy is fleeing from the field ; to buttress the 
first learning with clinching reviews, is to follow up the 
victory and gather its spoils. Remember that it is not what 
has once been learned but what is retained, that is of value 
to you. 

Reviews need not, however, take much time. If the 
matter has once been well learned a skimming is generally 
enough for review. In history, or geography, or physics a 
look at the headlines and a glance down through the para- 
graph should refresh your mind on what it contains. In 
geometry a glance at the figure and a rapid survey of the 
main steps in the proof should suffice. Later reviews may 
be even more schematic. After, say, the second review, a 
mere reading of the table of contents, or a slow turning of 
the pages, should be enough to recall the contents of the 



178 Human Conduct 

book. Reviews may thus be brief but they should be rather 
frequent. They may, however, be at increasingly long 
intervals as time goes on. For example, it may be sufficient 
to make a first review in about three days, then wait a week 
before covering the same ground again, then two weeks, 
then a month, then three months. Experiments are being 
conducted at present to determine the best intervals for such 
reviews. 

Distributed learning. — In further evidence of the value of 
frequency of recall in connection with memory is the fact that 
more can be accomplished in a certain aggregate of time if the 
work is divided into intervals than if it is done continuously, 
A poem that is reread two or three times at a half dozen differ- 
ent sittings is usually learned better than if the dozen or 
dozen and a half repetitions had been made all at once. 
These intervals allow the mind to settle around the fact 
that is being memorized. As old Thomas Fuller — already 
quoted — quaintly says : ^^ It is best knocking in the nail 
over night and clinching it the next morning.^' And so, 
after you have given conscientious effort to a memory task 
and have not yet fully mastered it, sleep over it ; go back 
to it again after the interval. A number of such relatively 
short, vigorous onslaughts must in time win you a victory — ■ 
and likely a permanent one. 

PRINCIPLES OF RECALL 

Mechanical association. — The second set of principles for 
the effective use of the memory are those which have to do 
with the recall of experiences through their association with 
other experiences. Read attentively down through each of 
the following columns of words, noticing the relation of each 
word to the next. Out of the words in the second column 
you can probably make a connected story. See if you can not 
repeat each column correctly after only one or two readings. 



Use of the Memory 179 

Ice Dinner Bell 

Slippery Beef 

Smooth Butcher 

Rough Horn 

Ruffian Band 

Prison Picnic 

Crime Rustic Bridge 

Crimea Brook 

War Minnows 

Army Creek 

Navy Slippery Bank 

Ship Wet 

Sail Cold 

Auction Doctor 

Bid Money 

Competition Christmas 

Why is it that you can get these hsts of words so easily? 
Plainly because each word furnishes the cue to the next. 
Each two consecutive words are hitched together according 
to the laws of association. 

Simple mnemonics. — A useful rule, then, in memorizing) 
any fact is to associate it with some other fact or facts. If 
one is to get back an experience when he wishes, it must 
have strings to it by means of which it can be dragged 
back, and such strings are the association links between 
ideas, of which we heard so much earlier in this chapter. 
This is what the boy is providing for when he ties a string 
around his finger to remind him to bring his report card back 
to school in the afternoon. He is sure to see the string while 
at home and this can recall to him the idea of his report. 
I once had difficulty in remembering a lady's name — which 
was Sprout — until a chance association made me master of 
it. She was standing on loose stones in a brook when some- 
body remarked that if she got her feet wet she might grow 
fast as all sprouts do. Thereafter I was able to remember 
the name through its connection with this experience. The 
sequence of the letters in the troublesome diphthongs ei and ie 



i8o Human Conduct 

can be remembered from the word lice^ the i coming first 
after an I but the e after c, — thus believe in the one case, 
and receive in the other. The names and order of the colors 
of the rainbow can be remembered by the nonsense word 
vibgyor, or backwards by the name Roy G. Biv, each letter 
being the initial one in a required color. Such artificial 
means of assisting memory are called ^' mnemonic '^ devices 
and the ingenious person can work one out for any fact that 
he finds it difficult to memorize otherwise. 

Associations to be rational when possible. — Of course the 
more logical these associations are the better. Artificial 
ones are to be used only when natural ones are lacking. 
Professor James tells of a man who, like most of the rest of us, 
was in the habit of walking off and leaving his umbrella. 
To protect himself he built up firmly an association between 
doorway and umbrella, so that he could not pass through a 
doorway without its bringing to his mind the idea umbrella, 
and reminding him to get his before proceeding further. 
Dr. Jewett tells of helping a boy to memorize, partly by means 
of such associations, the following stanza : 

On came the whirlwind — like the last 
But fiercest sweep of tempest blast ; 
On came the whirhvind — steel gleams broke 
Like lightning through the rolling smoke ; 

The war was waked anew. 
Three hundred cannon mouths roared loud, 
And from their throats, wdth flash and cloud, 

Their showers of iron threw. 

After urging him to give close attention while reading the 
stanza and to think of its meaning he goes on : 

"Then, too," I added, "you'll probably need to make some 
bridges. Do you have special trouble anywhere? " '* There's one 
place," he said pointing to the sixth line. " I go well enough until 
I get there; then I stick." I saw what the trouble was, — there 
was nothing at the end of " Waked anew" to suggest the next line. 
" Ah," said I, " you reach a chasm just there; you'll have to bridge 



Use of the Memory i8i 

it. You might connect 'waked' with 'canon.' Do it in this way: 
when you reach the word ' waked ' think how quickly you would 
waken if three hundred canon mouths roared loud near your bed ; 
and when you reach ' canon mouths ' be ready to join it to ' throats/ 
because throats and mouths suggest each other. For the line after 
think of 'showers' that fall from 'clouds.' Make sensible bridges 
when you can, but even a foolish bridge is better than a chasm." 

Mnemonic systems, — Most of the memory ^^ systems '' 
advertised for sale at a high price are merely schemes for 
mechanical association, and are so artificial and far-fetched 
that it is impossible to recommend them. The exponent of one 
of these, who offered his course, said to consist of six lessons, 
for two dollars per student (to be paid in advance) , but who 
absconded at the end of the second lecture, based his sys- 
tem on a framework like this : Hat, honey, home, yard, 
road, hill, tree, vine, castle (the vine hanging between the 
tree and castle), forest (back of the castle), river, bridge, 
graveyard, etc. This scheme can easily be connected 
up into a spacial system, and thus readily remembered. 
The trick was, then, to associate each of the objects to be 
remembered with one of the terms of this scheme. Sup- 
pose, for example, you were to order the following dozen 
articles down town : nails, sugar, wood, rice, flour, axle grease, 
apples, maple sirup, cranberries, pork, cheese, and salt. The 
following associations would possibly come to you : the nails 
are being held in the hat ; the sugar is similar to the honey ; 
the wood is piled in an unused room in the house ; the flour 
sack has burst and some of the flour lies scattered over 
the yard ; the boys are greasing the buggy along the road ; 
the apples have been jolted out of the wagon and lie scattered 
along the hill ; the tree is a maple and its sap is being drained 
for sirup, etc. If you will try this scheme you will find that 
you can temporarily remember by it with surprising accuracy 
long lists of disconnected objects. 

The figure alphabet. — A still more artificial mnemonic 
device, resting on the same principle, is the figure alphabet. 



I«2 



Human Conduct 



Certain letters in the alphabet are made to stand for specific 
digits, and then words are coined to express the desired 
numbers. The following illustrations are from Loisette's 
much advertised ^^Assimilative Memory.'^ The under- 
scored consonants have definite numerical values and so 
furnish the key to the date to be recalled. 

A characteristic of Herbert Spencer is the accuracy of his defini- 
tions. His birth, in 1820, may be indicated by the significant phrase. 
He define^ (1820). 

Roommates in college are called 'chums.' Harvard College, — 
the oldest collegiate institution in America, — really introduced 
' ' the chum age ' ' in America. The formula for the date of its founda- 
tion may be thus expressed — Harvard College founded ; the chum 
age (1636). ~ 

Estimate of mnemonics. — What shall we say of such 
scheme ? It would be perhaps going too far to say that it is 
utter folly, for, kept wdthin narrow bounds, it might be of 
some use. Yet the extremes to which it is carried are 
certainly unwarranted, even absurd. Usually it would be 
more difficult to remember the formula than the number 
fact itself, to say nothing of the trouble involved in finding 
a suitable formula and in translating it back into numbers. 
Such mechanical procedure would almost inevitably foster, 
too, ruinously scatterbrained habits of thinking. 

This criticism, however, is not directed against the practice 
of connecting a thing to be remembered with some associate, 
but against making use of fantastic associations when logical 
ones might be found. Yet even mechanical associations 
are not to be wholly tabooed. Jewett^s advice, given above, 
is sound : '^ Make sensible bridges when you can, but even 
a foolish bridge is better than a chasm.'' 

System. — But these mnemonic devices are after all only 
a lame way of making a system out of what we are to 
remember. If we can think our facts together into a rational 
whole we shall no longer be troubled in remembering the parts 



Use of the Memory 183 

of that whole. A student who really understands his 
geometry does not find it difficult to retain the proof of a 
theorem, for his reason supports his memory. The perception 
of what the demonstration demands as its next step readily 
gives the cue. So, too, the pupil who has caught the spirit 
of history does not find it difl&cult to remember its main facts. 
He could if necessary almost work out in advance the facts 
of the next lesson before studying it. For the events which 
belong to a period are nearly all causally interconnected, 
and whoever gets at the cause of the thing has an effective 
logical clue to all of them. Hence, in this group, our second 
rule for effective memorizing is think, reason^ get at the under- 
lying causes of things and thus bind them up into a system. 
When one thus sees his facts as a unit he has the most 
effective maze of associative connections. Not only does he 
have his desu^ed term tied to one or two others, as in the 
case above, but connected by natural and irrefragable ties to 
every other term of the system, and hence subject at all times 
to easy recall. ^^ So that,^' as James says, ^^ if we have poor i 
desultory memories we can save ourselves by cultivating the j 
philosophic turn of mind.^^ 

Classification, — Related to this matter of rational system 
is classification of the data which 3^ou wish to remember. 
Professor Starch gave to his class the following list of facts 
to be learned : 

Battle of Poitiers 1356 a.d. 

Katheko = come down 

Karphe = hay 

782 plus 465 = 1247 

Invention of grain binder 1854 a.d. 

624 plus 832 = 1456 

Arch of Constantine built 314 a.d. 

Zulon = timber 

901 plus 477 = 1378 

Battle of Colline Gate 82 b.c. 

758 plus 546 = 1304 



184 Human Conduct 

Invention of typewriter 1855 a.d. 

Harkos = oath 

683 plus 459 = 1142 

Ochthe = bluff 

To learn these fifteen facts required on the average fourteen 
minutes and three seconds. He then gave fifteen similar 
facts, but grouped them under three headings : five historical 
dates, five Greek words, and five additions. Thus classified 
the class was able to learn them in only nine minutes and 
eleven seconds on the average. And not only were they 
more quickly learned when organized but were doubtless 
also remembered longer. Miscellaneous facts are difficult 
to retain and to reproduce with certainty. They are like a 
disordered desk in which one can not find what he knows is 
there. On the other hand, facts grouped according to 
some plan are much more readity handled. This obviously 
has its bearings on the making of outlines in history and 
other subjects, or on the grouping of the odd jobs which are 
awaiting one^s attention. 

Comprehension. — And, finally, a third rule of this group 
is to seek to understand what you are to commit to 
memory. Before you understand it it is a jumble of dis- 
connected facts. After you understand it it makes a system. 
An educator found a little girl working furiously over some 
lessons. ^^ My little girl,^^ he sympathetically asked, ^^ do 
you understand what you are studying? '' ^^ Oh, no,^^ she 
replied, ^' we have so much to get that we have no time to 
understand it.^^ And this ^^ penny- wise and pound-foolish 
policy ^' is not uncommon among pupils. A boy was once 
sent to me for punishment for not learning a poem. He 
complained that the reason he could not learn it was because 
he did not understand in the least what it meant. After 
it was explained to him he was able to get it in a com- 
paratively short time. Before you set about memorizing 
a poem, or a lesson in physics, or a demonstration in geometry, 



Use of the Memory 185 

or the development of a formula in algebra or trigonometry, 
be sure to read it entirely through and get its meaning. Give 
your energy first to comprehending it, and then the task of 
memorizing it will be comparatively easy. 

MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS 

Part and whole method. — Left to himself nearly every 
person will attempt to memorize a selection by taking it a 
phrase, a sentence, or at most a paragraph at a time — the 
so-called ^^ part method. ^^ He will go over this fragment a 
number of times until he is able to repeat it correctly, and 
then take up, in the same way, the next fragment. Psy- 
chological experiments have shown this to be a most in- 
effective method of memorizing. It violates the principle of 
system, for it leaves the piece an aggregate of parts rather 
than a meaningful whole. It very often happens that 
one knows the parts well enough, when started upon 
them, but between each two fragments there is a chasm. 
This is frequently seen in the recitations of children, where a 
prompter is obliged to start them on nearly every line. The 
method of reading each time through the whole piece — the 
so-called ^^ whole method ^' — has been shown to be much 
more effective. After one has become accustomed to this 
method not only can he learn a selection in less time than by 
the old one but he can retain it better. In consequence psy- 
chologists have been unanimously urging the ^^ whole 
method '' of study. The most recent experiments, however, 
seem to indicate that neither the '^ part method ^^ nor the 
*' whole method '' alone is best, but a combination of the 
two. The piece should by all means first be read through — 
perhaps several times — as a whole, and then those parts 
that still remain unlearned worked up separately. But 
one should not fail to attempt frequently, along with this 
part study, to run through the piece as a whole, so as 



1 86 Human Conduct 

to keep it one meaningful unit instead of an aggregate of 
fragments. 

Learning beyond threshold. — Experiment has shown, too, 
that it is very economical to continue the studying of any 
matter, which is to be long retained, until it has been raised 
well above the threshold of bare recall. If one stops as soon 
as he can correctly repeat the matter, it fades away from 
him very rapidly. On the other hand, if he gives to it a few 
extra repetitions, it persists much longer and better. This 
little extra time much more than pays for itself, for the 
effectiveness of the learning is increased through it by a much 
larger percentage than that by which the time is lengthened. 

Attempted recitations. — It is also known that attempted 
recitations are an effective device in memorizing. One 
should always read through the selection once for orientation, 
and should follow this by another close reading or two in 
which he tries to get the details. But as soon as he feels 
that he has it fairly well he should close his book and try to 
recite to himself upon it. If he finds that he has forgotten 
at any point he should open his book and get that particular 
point — never omit it nor guess at it. Having got this point 
he should close his book again and continue with the recita- 
tion. Thus readings and attempted recitations should 
alternate until the piece has been learned. Witasck, working 
with nonsense syllables, found six readings and fifteen 
attempted recitations most economical, and in every case 
found an attempted recitation more effective than another 
reading. Another investigator (Katzaroff) concludes, ^^ The 
most effective procedure is to have a number of readings, 
then at least two attempted recitations, and end with at 
least two readings to get the general impression. '^ 

Cramming. — Another temptation, against which we 
must warn the student, is reliance upon '^ cramming " — 
that is, attempting to learn by a few hours of concentrated 
and forced memorizing materials supposed to have been got 



Use of the Memory 187 

through a long period of daily study. Such cramming, just 
before examinations, is the special sin of high school and 
college students, though others are not free from it. It is 
true that, in this way, an amazingly large amount of matter 
can be memorized for the time, but it usually goes as quickly 
as it comes. It has not had occasion to get associated with 
the many experiences to which it would have been tied had 
it been learned day by day throughout the preceding months. 
Effective learning always takes time. In some way the 
brain pathways conditioning what we have just learned seem 
to continue to be deepened and connected with others even 
after we have ceased our efforts and are apparently at rest. 
Not only does this fact have its application to cramming, 
as contrasted with leisurely learning throughout a long 
period, but it also should caution us against rushing quickly 
from one task to another. Experiment has proved that a 
short interval — at least a minute or two — of quiet, follow- 
ing a period of memorizing, is time well spent. During such 
interval the previous mental activity seems to continue and 
to fasten its effect more firmly in the brain. 

Memory's transformation of the past. — Finally we must 
notice a trick that memory has of retouching what she 
presents to us as the past. We do not get past experiences 
with all the austerity that really belonged to them, but 
softened down and radically recast. Man}^ experiments have 
shown that the very moment an experience is past we begin 
to modify it in recalling it. We take it for what we think it 
must have been. Says Stratton : 

Whatever our theoretical reverence for memory may be, none 
of us pays great practical respect to it ; what it tells we accept 
half-heartedly and with suspicion, never fully believing it unless 
reason approves. I seem to recall that the facts were thus and so, 
and yet reject this and believe the opposite because from certain 
present evidences I know that the event must have been otherwise. 
In this way, reason lords it over memory, modifying and rejecting 
her work without reserve. 



1 88 Human Conduct 

Nor is it only reason that enters to transform our rec- 
ollection of the past, but even more largely sentiment. 
Nietzsche somewhere says of an unpleasant past event : 
'' Memory says ^ I did ^ ; pride says ^ I didn^t.' Pride 
persists and finally memory yields.'' Thus all the past is 
mellowed toward our liking, just as the rough contour of a 
landscape is smoothed in the distance. Jerome K. Jerome 
humorously writes : 

Everything looms pleasant through the softening haze of time. 
Even the sadness that is past seems sweet. Our boyish days look 
very merry to us now, all nutting, hoop, and ginger bread. The 
snubbings and the toothaches and the Latin verbs are all forgotten 
— the Latin verbs especially. And we fancy we were very happy 
when we were hobbledehoys, and loved. . . . 

Yes it is the brightness, not the darkness, that we see when we 
look back. The sunshine casts no shadow on the past. The road 
that we have traveled stretches very fair behind us. We see not 
the sharp stones. We dwell but on the roses by the wayside, and 
the strong briars that stung us are, to our distant eyes, but gentle 
tendrils waving in the wind. God be thanked that it is so — that 
the ever-lengthening chain of memory has only pleasant links, and 
that the bitterness and the sorrow of to-day are smiled at on the 
morrow. 

This idealization of the past you should treat with a 
generous indulgence, for life would lose much of its poetry 
if it were not with us. But you must not let it weaken your 
confidence in the present. You must expect it and under- 
stand it. You must listen patiently to the poetry of the 
past, but I herewith give you license to smile to yourself 
and discount the stories of its greatness some ninety-five 
per cent. 

EXERCISES 

1. As stated in the text, certain areas of the cortex of the brain 
are specialized for certain specific functions. Does that confirm 
the old "Phrenology," which held that each "faculty" (as reason- 
ing power, patriotism, etc.) has its seat in a definite part of the 



Use of the Memory 189 

brain, and that one can ascertain the strength of this faculty from 
the prominence of the bump on the corresponding part of the skull? 

2. Give an example of some fact which you have remembered 
because of an extraordinarily vivid impression. How do you 
vividly impress upon yourself what you wish to remember? 

3. Devise a mnemonic for remembering which of the two words, 
canvas and canvass, has the double s ; for remembering the capi- 
tals of ten given states. 

4. What is the value, in memory work, of picking out the high 
points, holding them in mind, and drilling upon them? 

5. What is the effect of note-taking upon the attention which 
you give to the matter of which you make note? What effect 
will this have upon the retention in mind or of the fact noted on 
paper? Is it true that to trust the memory will strengthen it? 
But does it ever betray one? Recommend a method of taking 
and using notes which will combine the certainty involved in care- 
ful notes and the psychological advantages accruing from trusting 
the memory. 

6. Must a good memory retain everything? Do you see how 
too detailed and "photographic" memorizing would be harmful 
rather than helpful? What does Home mean by saying that "we 
never truly remember until we have forgotten"? Describe what 
you believe to be the best memory. 

7. Which is the higher type of memory, that characterized by 
a high degree of physiological retentiveness, or that which is pieced 
out with a .good deal of thinking ? 

8. Why can one learn an address which he himself has written 
more easily than one written by another? 

9. Show how you might apply the principle of classification as 
an aid in remembering the twenty students who are to make up a 
certain party ; the articles which you are to purchase down town. 

10. A student in a psychological laboratory was studying a set 
of twelve nonsense syllables when he accidentally saw how they 
could be read together into a sort of story. Thereupon they were 
memorized with almost no further effort. What principle was 
involved ? 

11. What is the value of school examinations? To what extent 
do they motivate review? Organization? 

12. In their initiation ceremonies savages sometimes severely 
beat the youth while they impart to him the secrets of the tribe. 
Is there any psychological justification for this? What methods, 
employed for the same purpose, do we substitute for theirs? 



CHAPTER XIV 
MENTAL IMAGERY 

Viewpoint of this chapter. — In the preceding chapter we 
saw how our experience of the past is recalled. We discovered 
there that each experience is conditioned by a certain set 
of brain tracks; that as long as these pathways persist, 
the experience is retained in memory; that whenever, 
for any reason, this brain system is again set into activity 
the experience is revived ; and that the method of setting 
it into activity, and thus getting back the experience, is to 
have a nerve current flow over into it from some other sys- 
tem functionally connected therewith — a condition which 
we described as association between the ideas belonging to the 
two brain systems. But we had occasion to mention only 
casually the structure of these recalled experiences, — that is, 
the stuff of which they consist. In this chapter we shall 
turn to that problem. 

Concrete imagery in memory. — Stop and think for a 
minute of your home. What comes before you? Is it not 
a picture of the yard, of the house, of the sitting room, of 
your parents? Do you not hear again the sound of the 
voices of your friends and relatives, or feel their handshake? 
Indeed, do you not have again just the experiences which 
you have had, or which you would have if you were on the 
spot, only in less vivid and more fleeting form? You catch 
only the ^^ high-lights ^' and even these you must catch on 
the wing, so that when, as psychologist, you turn to study 
them they immediately vanish from you ; but nevertheless 

190 



Mental Imagery 191 

while you have them they are quaUtatively much Uke the 
real experiences to which they refer. 

Just sOj if you can catch yourself at it, you will find that 
all your recalled experiences are made up of some sort of 
concrete imagery. What surges back into mind, as the 
remembered experience, is the enfeebled sound of the word 
once heard in sense, the reconstructed picture of the scene, 
the tendency to reproduce the movement, the repetition, 
in very evanescent form, of the taste or odor. 

And that this would be the case one who knows the phys- 
ical basis of mental activity would be forced to predict. 
For, as we have seen, an experience is recalled by reason of 
a nerve current flowing back through the system of path- 
ways formed when the experience was first had. And when 
this same combination of nerve cells and fibers is again active 
it is to be expected that the same psychical experience will 
attend as first accompanied it. When first formed, under 
the pronounced influence of the external stimulus, the ac- 
tivity was vigorous and hence the mental experience vivid ; 
restimulated by the feebler energy due to association, the 
activity is less vigorous and hence the mental experience 
somewhat weakened. But, as the physical causes are alike 
in kind and differ only in degree, it is to be expected that the 
mental will be also qualitatively similar. 

Concrete imagery in constructive mental activity. — And 
what is true of memory is true of constructive mental ac- 
tivity — imagination and reasoning. This, too, consists of 
concrete imagery. Suppose you are trying to decide which 
is the better road to take on some particular occasion ; you 
will trace, in visual or motor imagery, the one — or at least 
certain parts of it — and then trace the other and com- 
pare. At the least, a fleeting image of some particularly 
important part of the one will present its claims to you in 
comparison with a similar presentation from the other. If 
you are trying to invent some machine you will picture more 



192 Human Conduct 

or less clearly to yourself its parts and how they are to fit 
together. If you are planning a house, or a vacation trip, 
or trying to think what can be wrong with the automobile, 
you are equally dependent upon constructing the scene be- 
fore you in some sort of concrete imagery. Sometimes this 
imagery may be of a very meager type, such as the image 
of the name of an object or very suppressed movement or 
attitudes (see below). Indeed much of your constructive 
thinking you do in terms of this meager verbal or kinaes- 
thetic imagery. But whenever you strike some difficult 
point, where your thoughts can not run on so readily and 
so smoothly, at once a fuller and more vivid imagery comes 
to the fore. Nor is it surprising that your constructive 
thinking must be done in the same sort of concrete terms as 
those employed in memory, for all constructive thinking is 
dependent for its materials upon past experience. Indeed 
you can do no thinking that does not consist in compound- 
ing the elements of your past experience, as we shall more 
fully show in our next chapter. 

Range of Imagery. — Since imagery comes from the re- 
use of systems of brain pathways formed when an experi- 
ence was first had, it would appear that we should have as 
many types of imagery as we have different kinds of sen- 
sations. For any idea there are likely to be pathways rami- 
fying into the visual, the auditory, the olfactory, the gusta- 
tory, the tactile, and the various kinaesthetic areas of the 
cortex, and when these are again in play, this same sort of 
imagery should be revived. And it is probably true that 
we are capable of all these forms of imagery, but some of 
them are so difficult to get, or are got so very feebly, that 
some psychologists deny that they exist at all. Certain it is 
that some types are much more prominent than others. On 
the whole, probably more than half of our thinking is done in 
visual terms, and the greater part of the remaining half in 
auditory and motor terms. Tactile, gustatory, and ol- 



Mental Imagery 193 

factory come last, if these last two are found at all. You 
will have an opportunity in a moment to see whether you 
can find these types in your own thinking. 

Individual differences. — Experiment, however, has in- 
dicated very great individual differences in the sort of imagery 
chiefly used. One person will depend more upon visual, 
another, more upon auditory, a third, more upon motor. 
A little while ago it was customary to emphasize very much 
this difference and to divide people into classes, — visiles, 
audiles, motiles, tactiles, — according to their reigning type 
of imagery. We no longer regard these classes as exclusive 
of each other. ^^ With most of us,^^ Angell says^ ^' there 
appears to be relatively good representation of several 
forms, especially the visual, auditory, tactile, and motor. ^' 
Yet there is no doubt that the different types are developed 
in different proportions by different persons, and that some 
persons have one form or another very highly developed 
or nearly lacking. A celebrated painter is said to have been 
able, after placing his subject in a chair and looking at him 
intently for a few minutes, to dismiss him and yet paint a 
perfect likeness of him from the visual imagery which re- 
curred every time he turned his eyes toward the chair where 
the subject had been sitting, and Mozart had such highly 
developed auditory imagery that he was able to reproduce 
from memory, after a single hearing, Allegri's elaborate 
and intricate '' Miserere.'' On the other hand, Betts tells 
of a member of his psychology class who was unable to re- 
call the appearance of her mother only a few moments after 
having seen her, and of a pastor who could not recall the 
difference between '' Old Hundred '' and '' Yankee Doodle.'' 

Test for imagery. — In view of these facts it is interesting 
and worth while for each of you to test your own imagery, 
to see in which you are strong and in which, weak. This 
you can do by reading over, and answering to yourself, the 
following questions : 



194 Human Conduct 

1. Visual.! — 1. Can you imagine the color of — (a) A red rose? 
{h) A green leaf? (c) A yellow ribbon? {d) A blue sky? 

2. Can you image the form of — (a) The rose? (b) The leaf? 
(c) The teacup? {d) The knife? 

3. Can you compare in a visual image — ■ (a) The color of 
cream and the color of milk? (&) The tint of one of your finger- 
nails with that of the palm of your hand? 

II. Auditory. — 1. Can you image the sound of — (a) The 
report of a gun? (6) The clinking of glasses? (c) The ringing 
of church bells ? {d) The hum of bees? 

2. Can you image the characteristic tone quality of — (a) A 
violin? (6) A cello? (c) A flute? {d) A cornet? 

3. Can you form auditory imagery of the rhythm of — • (a) The 
snare drum? (5) The base drum? (c) Dixie, or other air heard 
played? {d) "Tell me not in mournful numbers" spoken by 
yourself ? 

III. Motor. — 1. Can you image, in motor terms, yourself — 
(a) Rocking in a chair? (5) Walking down a stairway? (c) Bit- 
ing a lump of sugar? {d) Clenching your fist? 

2. Can you form a motor image of — (a) The weight of a pound 
of butter? (6) Your speed in running a race? (c) The speed of 
an arrow? 

IV. Tactual. — 1. Can you form a tactual image of the pres- 
sure of — (a) Velvet? {h) Smooth glass? (c) Sandpaper? 
{d) Mud? 

2. Can you form tactual imagery of — (a) The flow of water 
against the finger ? (6) The weight of a particular coin in the hand ? 

V. Olfactory. — 1. Can you image the odor of — (a) Coffee? 
(6) Camphor? (c) An onion? {d) Apple-blossoms? 

2. Can you image odors from — (a) A meadow? {h) A con- 
fectioner's shop? 

VI. Gustatory. — 1. Can you image the taste of — (a) Sugar? 
{h) Salt? (c) Vinegar? (d) *^Quinine? 

2. Can you image the taste of — (a) An apple? (6) Chocolate 
cake? (c) Beefsteak? 

VII. Thermal. — 1. Can you image the coldness of — (a) Ice- 
cream? (&) A draught of cold air? 

2. Can you image the warmth of — (a) Hot tea? {h) A warm 
poker ? 

! Taken (much abbreviated) from Seashore's Elementary Experi- 
ments in Psychology. 



Mental Imagery 195 

VIII. Pain. — Can you secure a sensory image of the pain of — 
(a) The prick of a pin? (6) Running your finger along the edge 
of a sharp knife? (c) A toothache or headache? 

Change of imagery with age and occupation. — Although 
the experiments with the imagery of children have so far 
been few and unsatisfactory, it is probable that there is 
some change in the balance between the several types as 
one grows older. In early childhood the concrete visual 
seems to predominate even more fully than later, and the 
auditory is also strong. This is doubtless because the ex- 
perience of one's early years is so largely in terms of things 
seen and heard. On the other hand, as one grows older 
he more often sits down and thinks about things and their 
relations without the actual presence of the things themselves. 
This thinking one is likely to do in terms of their names, or 
of very suppressed attitudes toward them, and, in conse- 
quence, the imagery that is practiced is voco-motor (move- 
ments of the vocal organs) and kinsesthetic (muscular). 
There is no doubt, too, that the imagery of children is much 
richer and fuller than that of adults as far as sensuous vivid- 
ness is concerned, though, on account of the more restricted 
observation of the child, it is probably less complete in 
detail. 

Dependence of imagery on occupation. — Imagery doubt- 
less varies, too, according to occupation and environment. 
The artist must use visual imagery so much that it gains 
more and more complete dominance over him. Indeed, no 
one can be an artist who can not see in visual imagery his 
picture before he begins to paint it. Almost any one could 
easily develop the muscular control necessary to paint, but 
what most of us lack is the ability to see our result in advance 
with sufficient clearness and detail to know just how we 
should next move our pencil or brush. So a native possession 
of strong visual imagery would seem to be essential for an 
artist, and his training doubtless consists quite as much in a 



196 Human Conduct 

development of his ability to image clearly and systematically 
as in the acquirement of motor control. Similarly the 
musician must have strong auditory imagery. He must hear 
the music in imagination before he can compose it, or even 
before he can play it properly. So, too, the man who works 
in some manual activity comes to guide himself at that 
work largely in terms of motor imagery. When he thinks 
how he shall take hold of one of its tasks he is likely to do 
so in terms of how it will feel in his muscles to do it. In- 
deed if he has half forgotten which way to turn a screw, or 
in which direction to move his foot, he is very likely to try 
out in advance certain movements of the hand or foot and 
ascertain whether the movements feel right, thus showing 
clearly that he is thinking in motor terms. 

It has also been shown that imagery differs at different 
stages of intellectual development. In a famous inquiry, 
made more than thirty years ago, Galton found that scientists 
have very meager concrete imagery. This is doubtless be- 
cause they have become accustomed to doing much of their 
thinking in terms of principles which do not lend themselves 
to being concretely imaged, but which must be thought 
in symbolic terms — that is in voco-motor or kinsesthetic 
imagery. On the other hand, persons who have not prac- 
ticed abstract thinking, but who have habitually dealt with 
the concrete and particular, are accustomed to use a much 
more concrete type of imagery. 

Effective appeal to imagery in teaching. — Now any one 
who wishes to deal effectively with his fellows must take 
account of these differences in imagery from one individual 
to another and from one age or condition to another. The 
teacher is confronted continually by the necessity of con- 
forming to these requirements. As an educated adult she 
would naturally think in symbolic terms. But she may not 
teach in those terms. She must put her presentation in con- 
crete form : she must present objects, and draw and write 



Mental Imagery 197 

on the board, for visual effects ; she must imitate the sounds 
of the animals, or other objects studied about, for the audi- 
tory ; and she must have as many historic and other instances 
dramatized as possible, so as to reach the motor imagery. 
Only thus can the matter be fully understood by her young 
pupils. 

Similarly, what material she would have remembered she 
must put, for maximum effect, in the various sense modali- 
ties. Thus in teaching spelling she should write the word 
on the board, with its critical letters in colored crayon, and 
call particular attention to its form, for the sake of having 
it got in the visual imagery. She should then spell it aloud, 
and have several pupils in turn spell it aloud, to reach the 
auditory imagery. Next, she should have the class spell 
it several times in concert, in order to get the feel of it in 
their throats (voco-motor imagery). Finally, with older 
children, she should have them write the word several times, 
for the sake of the kinsesthetic imagery and for further visual 
analysis. The same principle of appeal to varied imagery 
can be used in history, geography, etc., though in each case 
the method must be adapted to the subject matter. This 
varied sense appeal is both for the purpose of making a 
deeper impression on each individual (giving best effect 
when the visual and auditory are combined) and also for 
reaching all those in whom one type or another predominates. 

In writing and public speaking. — Similarly the writer 
and the public speaker must adapt their message to the image 
type of those whom they address. When addressing chil- 
dren their message must be put concretely. Illustrations of 
a pictorial character must abound ; abstract principles must 
be largely absent. On the other hand, when addressing 
scholarly persons such concrete presentation would be con- 
sidered not only flabby but silly. There a presentation in 
general principles, which must be appreciated in symbolic 
imagery, is appropriate. In addressing, too, people of any 



198 Human Conduct 

age the message must not be couched too exclusively in one 
type of imagery. The illustrations must be partly of the 
visual, partly of the auditory, and partly of the motor type. 
If one presents his message wholl}^ in terms of his own 
favored type of imagery he will be dumb to a large part of 
his audience. It is one^s business to try, in his presentation, 
to get the viewpoint of his audience, rather than the one 
native to himself, and this applies no less to imagery than 
to those other aspects which we discussed in our chapter on 
^^Apperception and Tact.^' Fortunately, one's peculiarity of 
imagery consists ordinarily only in the relatively greater 
prominence of one type rather than in the entire absence of 
others, but even this lack of balance can be, doubtless, largely 
overcome by care on the part of the worker or speaker when 
he plans his work. 

Dramatic imagery. — The dramatic imagery appears to 
have possibilities almost entirely overlooked by psycholo- 
gists. This type of imagery consists in thinking in terms of 
bodily attitudes more or less appropriate to the situation it- 
self (and is, therefore, a subdivision of the motor type). Thus 
pride would call up, not a visual picture of the printed word 
nor an image of a person notorious for that quality, but a 
feeling of the bodil}^ attitude in ^^ourself expressive of pride 
or of some relation to this. So, ambitiorij honor, friend, enemy , 
would call up motor images of yourself performing acts ap- 
propriate to these objects. Without doubt, too, the act 
itself is really performed in very suppressed form, for we 
learned in our discussion of suggestion that any mental state 
tends to work itself out into bodily expression. 

It is probably to this sort of imagery that dramatic 
speakers, such as ^^ Billy '' Sunday, make such an effective 
appeal. They themselves continually act out what they 
are saying, and thus reach their hearers not only through 
visual and auditory imagery, but through this more primi- 
tive and basic mimetic imagery as well. Thus their auditors 



Mental Imagery 199 

are thrown imitatively into suppressed bodily attitudes, 
expressive of the ideas and emotions given forth by the 
speaker. But, if the currently accepted theory of emotions 
is correct (see Chapter II) the emotions themselves come 
with, and in consequence of, the attitudes which express 
them. Thus the auditors are swept on with a force which 
no appeal lacking in dramatic imagery could possess. There 
is no reason why this trick of appealing to mimetic imagery 
could not be acquired through training. We have doubtless 
here a field which the student of effective speaking can well 
afford to study. 

Value to individual of wide range of imagery. — But not 
only for the sake of effective presentation of a message to 
others, but also for the sake of his own fullness of life, it is 
important for every one to possess the power of using as 
wide range of imager}^ as possible. When sensation is in 
question it is quite clear that any one, to take in what the 
world presents, must have a complete set of well-developed 
sense organs. If he lacks the possibility of vision or hearing 
or touch or taste or smell, the message of nature, on the 
side for which he lacks sensibility, is shut off from him. 
And evidently the same thing is true of the imagery in 
terms of which experiences are recalled or constructed. If 
one lacks the power of visual imagery, or has it in only rudi- 
mentary form, the possibilities of his ideational experience 
are narrowed much as that of his sense experience would be 
without sight, though, of course, to not quite the same 
extent, since it is possible for him to translate his imaged 
experience into other terms without entire loss. Similarly, 
if he lacks in auditory, in tactile, or in any other type of 
imagery he is mentally blind to just that extent. It might 
safely be said that one is as many times a man as he has 
well-developed types of imagery subject to use. Not that 
he will always wish to employ all of these types of concrete 
imagery, or even any one of them — for in much of one's 



200 Human Conduct 

thinking one can best use a very schematic imagery and, 
indeed, not infrequently a too concrete imagery is a positive 
handicap in one's thinking. But all do frequently have 
occasion to picture to themselves concretely what is rep- 
resented, and the adequacy with which they can do this is 
dependent upon the range of their imagery. 

Imagery in literature. — A few quotations from standard 
writers will show how impossible it is for any one to appre- 
ciate literature fully without the employment of practically 
all the types of imagery. 

Without visual imagery one would be, for example, 
unable to get anything like the full force of the follow- 
ing description with which Bret Harte opens ^^ Gabriel 
Conroy ^' : 

Snow. Everywhere. As far as the eye could reach — fifty 
miles, looking southward from the highest white peak — filling 
ravines and gulches, and dropping from walls and canons in white, 
shroud-like drifts, fashioning the dividing ridge into the likeness 
of a monstrous grave, hiding the bases of giant pines, and com- 
pletely covering young trees and larches ; rimming with porcelain 
the bowd-like edges of still, cold lakes, and undulating in motion- 
less white billows to the edge of the distant horizon. Snow lying 
everywhere over the California Sierras on the fifteenth day of 
March, 1848, and still falKng. 

It had been snowing for ten days; snowing in finely granu- 
lated powder, in damp, spongy flakes, in thin, feathery plumes ; 
snomng from a leaden sky steadily ; snowing fiercely, shaken out 
of purple-black clouds in white flocculent masses, or dropping in 
long level lines like white lances from the tumbled and broken 
heavens. But always silently ! The woods were so choked with 
it — it had so permeated, filled and possessed earth and sky ; it had 
so cushioned and muffled the ringing rocks and echoing hills, that 
all sound was deadened. . . . The silence was vast, measureless, 
complete. . . . No bird ^\H[nged its flight across the white expanse, 
no beast haunted the confines of the black woods. 

Without strong auditory imagery the following two pas- 
sages would lose much of their charm : 



Mental Imagery 201 

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank, 
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music 
Creep in our ears ; soft stillness and the night 
Become the touches of sweet harmony. 

While the plowman near at hand 
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land 
And the milkmaid singeth blithe 
And the mower whets his scythe. 

For motor imagery consider the following : 

Those lily hands 

Tremble like aspen leaves, upon the lute. 

Hop as light as bird from briar to briar. 

She seemed as happy as a wave 
That dances on the sea. 

To appreciate the following passages from Shakespeare 
requires olfactory imagery : 

It came o'er my ear like the sweet sound 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing and giving odor. 

Here's the smell of blood still : all the perfumes of Arabia will not 
sweeten this little hand. 

Also this statement of Eve^s from Milton : 

The pleasant savory smell 

So quickened appetite, that I methought, 

Could not but taste. 

The following must be pictured in tactile imagery : 

I take thy hand, this hand 

As soft as dove's, and as white as it. 

Thus I set my printless feet 
O'er the cowslip's velvet head, 
That bends not as I tread. 



202 Human Conduct 

Kinesthetic imagery is essential if one is not to miss the 
effect of the following from Shakespeare : 

At last, a little shaking of mine arm, 

And thrice his head thus waving up and down, 

He raised a sigh so piteous and profound 

As it did seem to shatter all his bulk 

And end his being. 

And of course, if such wide range of imagery is necessary 
to enjoy literature to the fullest extent, it is also necessary 
in order to produce it with the greatest degree of effective- 
ness. Therefore the writer and public speaker should have 
the power of varied imagery. He must touch all classes of 
men and must do justice to all sorts of scenes and incidents. 
With a narrow range of imagery this is hardly possible. 
Except as one can enter freely and naturally into any phase 
of life treated it is doubtful whether he can present it in 
other than an artificial and stilted manner. 

Possibility of cultivating imagery. — It is, therefore, emi- 
nently worth while for one to try to round out his range 
of imagery. Doubtless one^s bias, in this respect, is partly 
native, so that it can not be radically changed, yet imagery 
seems to be susceptible of a considerable amount of training 
and hence of improvement. Angell says : 

It is astonishing to observe how rapidly this capacity for 
visualizing unfolds in response to a little systematic effort and 
practice. By devoting to the task a few minutes each day for a 
week, one may learn to visualize with great detail and remarkable 
accuracy the form, size, color, etc., of even large and complex 
objects, such, for example, as great buildings. Frequently at the 
outset we find that our images are relatively faint, meager, and 
unstable ; they lack vividness and veracity in color, detail in form, 
and appropriate dimensions in size. Images of other varieties, 
auditory, for instance, are similarly defective at times, and yield 
as a rule to discipline, with a corresponding form of develop- 
ment. 



Mental Imagery 203 

And Meuman, than whom there is, in this field, perhaps 
no higher authority, says : 

Any particular sort of ideating can be acquired by training, 
if there is not a complete dearth of ideational elements from the 
corresponding sense-department in the individual consciousness 
at the outset. I myself am dominantly non-visual in my ideation 
of verbal material. ... In psychological experimentaticn I have 
cultivated \dsual ideation to such a degree that I am now able to 
solve arithmetical problems by means of auditory or of visual 
images as I prefer : I can learn a group of letters, numbers, or 
syllables, by means of auditory, visual, or motor imagery.^ 

Methods of cultivating imagery. — There are three ways 
in which imagery can be cultivated. (1) By training the 
sense organs. Angell says : 

The development of imagery runs parallel in a measure with 
that of perception, with which, as we saw in the previous chapter, 
it is very intimately connected. It holds to reason, without any 
elaborate justification, that if any sense organ is allowed to go 
unused, or is used infrequently, the imagery belonging to that 
special sense can not develop freely. In confirmation of this 
general assertion we have but to notice that the imagery which 
most of us find we can command with greatest accuracy and flexi- 
bility is that belonging to the perceptual processes with which we 
are most intimately familiar, i.e. vision, hearing, movement, and 
touch. Compared with these our images of temperature, smell, 
and taste are relatively impoverished. 

So if one would strengthen any type of imagery one es- 
sential would seem to be to look to a rich perceptual experi- 
ence in terms of the sense corresponding to which the imagery 
is to be cultivated. The habit of making attentive obser- 
vations in the sense in question will, without doubt, make 
possible a completer reproduction in that sense modality. 
Whether that will improve the power of original construc- 
tion in that type of imagery is more doubtful, but it is not 
improbable. 

1 Yet some psychologists doubt whether imagery can be trained. 



204 Human Conduct 

(2) By exercising the imagery through reproduction in it. 
One can try to recall the appearance of faces, of houses, of 
landscapes which he has seen ; one can try to hear again a 
song or a concert or the voice of a friend ; or one can at- 
tempt to live through again, in terms of the appropriate 
imagery, experiences which involve any of the other sense 
modalities. 

(3) By constructing in terms of the various senses. When 
a description is read in literature, or in geography, or when 
an incident is narrated in story or in history, one can stop 
to picture it to himself in the appropriate concrete terms. 
This is probably the most important method, because it is 
so easily handled. The teacher can easily stop her class 
and ask the pupils to try to picture the scene before them — 
to see the landscape, to hear the whistle of the wind or the 
patter of the rain, to feel the tiredness of the weary pedes- 
trian. She can also advantageously have many scenes 
dramatized in order to cultivate the motor imagery. The 
serious student, too, can put himself through the same course 
of training. Such construction can also be done without 
the stimulus of a description or narration by another. One 
can build for himself, in imagination, constructs in the various 
sense modalities. He can, that is, construct for himself 
bits of scenery, snatches of music, or bits of activity. This 
every one, of course, does anyway almost continually, but 
often chiefly in his own favored type of imagery. To make 
the activity serve the end of image training it is necessary 
only to see that one^s mental constructing be done partly in 
the kinds of mental imagery which he wishes to cultivate, 
and not merely in that which is most natural to him. 

Summary. — We may summarize this chapter, then, by 
saying that all mental processes go on in terms of some sort 
of mental imagery. We potentially have a type of imagery 
corresponding to each kind of sense, but some are so poorly 
developed that many psychologists doubt whether they 



Mental Imagery 205 

exist at all. On the other hand, the visual imagery is, as a 
rule, much the most prominent, and the auditory, motor, 
and tactile follow in decreasing importance. There are, 
however, great individual differences of which teacher and 
public speaker must take account. These differences are 
partly native, but defects in imagery can probably be largely 
overcome by training, and, if so, it is extremely important 
to overcome them. Imagery is to be thus trained in three 
ways : (1) through cultivating the senses ; (2) through 
reproducing in the several sense modalities ; and (3) through 
constructing in the various kinds of imagery. 

EXERCISES 

1. Is it going too far to say that there is always some concrete 
basis to all forms of ideation? 

2. Show what is meant for a speaker or writer to take the point 
of view of his audience in respect to mental imagery. 

3. What difference is there between the imagery needed for 
appreciating literature and that needed for appreciating a discus- 
sion of the value of Latin? 

4. How can the student train his own imagery? 

5. Darwin found himself unable to appreciate poetry in his old 
age. Is there any connection between that and his development 
as a scientist? Could he have retained his ability to appreciate 
poetry without interfering with his work as scientist? 

Note. — An excellent discussion of mental imagery is to be found in 
Colvin's The Learning Process (Macmillan), pp. 101-115, and 123-27. Also 
in Halleck's Education of the Central Nervous System, Chapters VII-XI. 
Most of the quotations from literature used in this chapter are taken from 
Halleck's book. 



CHAPTER XV 
IMAGINATION AND ITS CULTURE 

Past experience must be recast. — In our chapter on 
memory we saw how past experiences are reinstated in con- 
sciousness. Now memory is an extremely important faculty, 
and is, indeed, basic to all mental processes. Yet if man 
were capable only of recalling past experiences as they oc- 
curred he would be destined to an exceedingly sterile and 
inefficient life. He would be able to deal consciously only 
with situations which were exactly the same as those met 
in the past, but he could not adjust himself effectively to 
any new situation. 

But it is evident that, on this simple level of consciousness, 
we can not get far. Our problems are never absolutely 
identical with those of the past, and are usually considerably 
different from them. We can not, therefore, ordinarily 
apply to them adequately the ^^ performed judgments '' 
of the past. We must reconstruct our methods. We must 
analyze — tear apart — our past experiences and under- 
stand the significance of their several parts. Then, when 
confronted with a new situation, we must select from a wide 
range of analyzed past experiences those parts which serve 
our present purpose and combine them into a new synthesis, 
every element of which is there completely adapted to its 
peculiar function. All originality and progress depends 
upon the ability to do just this. 

Imagination. — And here comes in our new function of 
the mind to supplement the work of the memory, — imagina- 
tion. For the ability thus to tear apart our past experi- 

206 



Imagination and its Culture 207 

ences and recombine their elements into new constructs 
is dependent upon this popularly but wrongly despised 
faculty. Imagination is nothing more nor less than the 
holding of constructs before the mind when the corre- 
sponding objects are not present to sense. Ordinarily, 
however, when we think of imagination we have in mind the 
formation of new mental constructs, and it is in that some- 
what restricted sense that we shall here use the term.^ And 
so, used in this sense, the essence of imagination is the 
rearrangement spoken of above as so essential to progress. 

Imagination and memory. — In this respect we may 
contrast memory and imagination. In the former, experi- 
ences are recalled in just the form in which they were first 
had ; in the latter, it is only the elements which were pre- 
viously experienced, the object into which they have been 
combined never having been previously met with. Thus 
the inventor of the telephone was able to call up in memory 
the telegraph, for he had seen this instrument. But the 
telephone he could only imagine, since although he had seen 
disks, electromagnets, wire, etc., he was obliged to bring 
these together in his mind into a new combination to get 
from them the idea of the telephone. In the memory ex- 
perience, the past furnished the elements in their old order ; 
in the imagination experience, it furnished the elements, 
but he worked them over, rearranged them. 

However, we must make this contrast cautiously. For 
we now know that one recalls in memory no experience 
exactly as he had it. There is always some rearrangement, 
omission, or change in relative importance, so that all mem- 
ory involves some of the elements of imagination. On the 
other hand, much imagination is of the reproductive type, 
where one^s construct is one which he has, in essentials, 

1 Most psychologists include under imagination a discussion of "repro- 
ductive" imagination and of mental imagery. Judd, however, places the 
emphasis upon rearrangement. 



2o8 Human Conduct 

met before, but which he does not now refer to his past. In 
fact the two faculties shade gradually into each other. In so 
far as we do not notice the rearrangement but recognize 
the experience as belonging, as a whole, to our past we have 
memor}^ ; in so far as we build a construct not referred, 
as a whole, to our past we have imagination. Yet the dis- 
tinguishing feature of imagination is rearrangement, while 
that of memory is the reinstatement of experiences without 
such rearrangement, and with the recognition of them as 
unmodified past experiences. 

Imagination dependent upon past. — From what has 
been said it is already clear that imagination, as well as 
memory, depends upon the past. It must go there for all 
of its materials. Angell says : 

It is a favorite conceit of the untutored mind to suppose that 
it is possible mentally to create absolutely new materials for ideas, 
that it is possible to burst over the bounds of one's past experi- 
ence and beget thoughts which are wholly novel. This is a flatter- 
ing delusion which a little reflection will effectually dispel, although 
there is a distorted truth underlying the vanity of the belief. 

In the case of the eight-legged dog it is clear that, although we 
may never have encountered just such a creature in any of our 
adventures, the superfluous legs with which we have endowed him, 
which constitute his sole claim to novelty, are merely as legs familiar 
items in every experience with the canine breed. 

No matter how tame or how fantastic the imagination 
may be, it is thus dependent wholly upon the past for its 
materials. The strangest figures of the ancient mythologies 
— the nine-headed Hydra ; the centaurs, with the head of 
a man and the body of a horse ; the Furies, with their hair 
of serpents — were only grotesque combinations of bodily 
parts seen in the men and animals of ordinary life. New 
machines that are thought out are only new combinations 
of simpler ones with which the inventor is already familiar. 
To get a perfect face Apelles is said to have traveled all over 



Imagination and its Culture 209 

Greece, getting the idea for a nose here, a forehead there, 
and a chin elsewhere, and it is in much that way that every 
artist works, whether in sculpture, painting, or literature. 
The elements of the old have been dissociated and then re- 
combined into new constructs — as a woman's head on the 
body of a fish — or have been changed in proportion — as 
in the case of a very small man with a very large head. 

Need of rich past experience. — So imagination draws its 
materials from the past. You see, then, how important, 
from this standpoint, is a rich past experience. No one 
who has not had it can be fruitful in imagination. Of course 
he may have a fantastic imagination, startling on account 
of its wildness, but that may be far from an effective one. 
In imagination one wishes to rebuild and he can do this 
only out of the materials which he has gathered in the past. 
And if he is to be resourceful in devising expedients he must 
have at command a breadth of experiences upon which to 
draw. To be sure the rapidity and the manner in which 
these come back to him are important as well as their num- 
ber, but it is quite clear that one can not plan devices of 
which he has not experienced the elements. So, to develop 
toward resourcefulness in shop, school, or public arena, one 
must keep wide awake and keenly observant. In art or 
in literature this is likewise obviously true. It has been said 
that one may write lyric poetry as early as eighteen or twenty, 
because in this it is enough to give vent to one's own emo- 
tions with the chance that they will strike a responsive 
chord in others, but that no one should attempt to write a 
novel until he is past forty, since before that time he has 
not observed and experienced life in sufficient breadth. 
The more experience the writer can get, through reading, 
travel, participation in social activities, and especially 
through personal suffering, the better balanced will be his 
work. One who undertakes to produce without such mass 
of material will inevitably produce works that are sterile, 



2IO Human Conduct 

or, if emotionally true, so distorted in concrete plot as to be 
seriously weakened or even rendered positively ridiculous. 

And this same thing is true outside the world of art. 
We are constantly tempted to invent devices or formulate 
theories of our own in realms with which our real acquaint- 
ance is small, and are often mortified later at discovering 
the absurdity of the devices or theories which we have too 
hastily evolved. Every one should read widely before formu- 
lating plans of his own — or at least before taking these 
seriously. The would-be inventor, for example, should 
inform himself of what others have done in his, or allied, 
fields before setting seriously about his invention. A knowl- 
edge of what has already been tried and accomplished will 
be sure to bring suggestions which will modify his plans and 
make them more nearly adequate. Similarly any one who 
proposes a social, religious, political, educational, or other 
reform, should do so only after acquainting himself very 
fully with what has been thought and done by others in the 
past, and with what is being thought and done elsewhere at 
the present. Otherwise his scheme will be only half-baked, 
and will inevitably lack proper scope and balance. Even 
so small a thing as the writing of an essay no student has a 
right to attempt — if he really intends to do a serious bit 
of work — until after he has taken advantage of every sug- 
gestion which the literature on the subject can give him. 
This wealth of material, together with what his own experi- 
ence can add, he can then work over in his mind and build 
out of it his own piece of work. 

No one can be acquainted with the spirit of modern schol- 
arship without seeing that its chief characteristic is such 
painstaking investigation as a preliminary to any positive 
expression. Certainly no scholar worthy of the name would 
write a book on any subject until he had read practically 
everything written on the subject, provided it was reason- 
ably available and promised to be of any importance. If 



Imagination and its Culture 211 

imagination fabricated its constructs out of thin air, as it 
is often popularly supposed to do, it might work without 
such preparation, but, since it can build only out of the 
materials supplied by past experience, it is necessary that 
the stock of building material be large and varied if the 
construct is to be substantial and duly proportioned. 

Three levels of imagination. — So imagination involves 
ideational constructions intended by nature to enable us 
to adapt ourselves to our environment by presenting to us 
this environment in ideal terms before we meet it in the 
concrete. It is therefore normally the forerunner, or scout, 
of our conduct and leads the way. But we may distinguish 
three degrees in the extent to which imagination is held to 
this dynamic, constructive function, and hence three levels 
on which imagination may work — daydreaming, interpre- 
tative imagination, and constructive imagination. 

In daydreaming, imagination is practically purposeless. 
In the normal use of the imagination one is trying 
out, in ideal form, acts which he intends to perform 
as soon as he has found, by this try-out in terms of mental 
imagery, a consistent way of doing so. But in daydream- 
ing one's imagination is dominated by no such purpose. 
One is not confronted by some practical situation to which 
he must immediately find the most promising way of adjust- 
ing himself. Instead he is planning out what he would say 
or what he would do in situations which are not only not 
pressing for adjustment at the time but which, as he himself 
vaguely feels, it is improbable he will ever meet. The lack 
of purpose in daydreaming is shown by the fact that one 
does not select one's problem and then mature, in imagina- 
tion, effective ways of dealing with it, but instead drifts 
in accord with the mechanical laws of association of ideas. 
In daydreaming, then, imagination sports at its pleasure. 

In interpretative imagination one follows the lead of another. 
One constructs in mind the scenes which this other describes. 



212 Human Conduct 

Thus one sees before him the events which the historian 
narrates or the situation which the novehst describes. Here 
one^s imagination is subordinated to leadership, but it is a 
leadership external to himself 

In creative imagination this type of mental activity reaches 
its highest form. Here imagination is fully subordinated 
to a purpose. Confronted by some problem to be solved one 
fits up in imagination a solution to it. Thus the inventor 
constructs in mind a machine adapted to doing a certain bit 
of work, the architect plans a house to meet prescribed re- 
quirements, the general formulates a plan of campaign and 
studies it for consistency and effectiveness, the preacher out- 
Hnes in mind a sermon designed to carry a definite message, 
and the writer evolves a coherent plot for his story. Each 
constructs for himself, but he keeps his constructing directed 
toward his chosen end. It is, of course, needless to say that 
these three stages are not distinctly marked off from one an- 
other. The difference is only one of degree. They shade off 
into each other. Daydreaming involves a certain amount of 
purposive construction, for seldom does one plan adjustments 
to situations which he knows could not possibly confront him, 
and in interpretative imagination there is also always present 
some originality, hence some constructive imagination, for 
every one puts into an interpreted scene much out of his 
own personality. 

DAYDREAMING. — Daydreaming is universal. By an in- 
quiry directed to more than a thousand persons of all ages 
Mr. T. L. Smith ^ found only two or three who claimed 
that they never daydream, and even these gave evidence of 
having too narrowly restricted the meaning of the term. 
From children of the earliest school years up to centenarians, 
all are subject to reverie, and many are positively enslaved 
by it. Little children dream of good things to eat, of play 
and of playmates ; later they fancy themselves living in fairy- 

^ Published as a chapter in Hall's Aspects of Child Life and Education. 



Imagination and its Culture 213 

land, often themselves holding the wand ; or thej^ feel them- 
selves flying through the air, or picture themselves as princes 
or princesses with magic adventures, or fancy that they are 
finding large sums of money and plan how they will spend it. 
Later they dream of owning bicycles, horses, automobiles, 
surpassing their comrades in some sort of contest, or win- 
ning honor, wealth, and high social position. Here are two 
accounts from youths (quoted from Smith) which ring 
true: 

F. 10. — One of my daydreams was that I could live in a lovely 
castle. Eat good food, fruit, and vegetables. And be a fairy and 
have a wand. And I could have an hundred houses full of twenty 
dollar bills. And as many dolls as I would wish. And have doll 
carriages dressed in silk. It would be summer all the time. I 
could have white silk dresses, pink, blue, and bright gay colors. 
I could have as many boys and girls to play with me. And I could 
have story books. 

M. 9. — Once I have thought that when I am a man I should 
like to be a millionaire and have a house with green grass as far 
as I could see. And a hundred horses, fine runners. And every 
day go out on some lake in a canoe better than anybody else. And 
the best horses in the world and all the things I could think of, I 
could have. 

In adolescence (high school age) daydreaming is at its 
height. Here the boy pictures himself a lionized social 
leader, great orator, general, engineer, statesman, financier, 
and philanthropist. The girl dreams of being a self-sacrific- 
ing nurse, the champion of some great reform, or a success- 
ful singer, actor, or author. Love dreams, too, usually of 
the most ennobling character, are almost sure to find a place 
here. A boy of nineteen speaks for all when he writes : 

As I have always wanted to be a lawyer, my air castles have 
always been of palatial law offices, stump speeches. Congress 
and the inevitable White House vision looms in the background. 
Every boy dreams of the presidency. I see myself delivering a 
powerful speech before some large audience, with roars of applause 
interrupting. 



214 Human Conduct 

Legitimacy of daydreaming. — Now what shall we say of 
the legitimacy of this practice? Is it good or bad? Well, 
doubtless it would be too puritanic to condemn it entirely. 
Nature has given to us this power and she seldom does 
anything that is wholly wrong. In Smith's investigation 
the subjects were asked whether they thought daydreaming 
right or wrong, and most of the young children at least 
believed it right — believed it did them good. The older 
ones were inclined to think it good if confined within strict 
limits. They found it, when normally indulged in, restful 
and even inspiring. It represents the mind's play time, 
and there is no doubt that from play we often derive as 
much value as from work. Not only is play refreshing, but 
modern pedagogy has found it an indispensable basis for 
rounded growth. Herbert Spencer, who was himself a pro- 
nounced dreamer, says of daydreaming : 

I believe that it is a general belief that castle building is detri- 
mental ; but I am by no means sure that this is so. In moderation 
I regard it as beneficial. It is the play of the constructive imagina- 
tion, and without constructive imagination there can be no high 
achievement. I beheve that the love I then had for it arose from 
the spontaneous activity of powers which in future life became 
instrumental to higher things. 

Dangers : Mental disorganization. — But there is no 
doubt that daydreaming involves very serious dangers. 
Perhaps nothing will more quickly benumb the mental facul- 
ties for their normal work than it. An hour of daydreaming 
while one lies in bed in the morning often makes one dull 
during a good part of the day. Indeed, if not held in check 
and offset by healthy activity, daydreaming tends to drift into 
a sort of insanity. Mr. Smith cites the following two cases : 

Ch. Fere cites an interesting case of a man who had been from 
childhood an inveterate daydreamer to an extent which seriously 
affected his college course. He had pursued in his dream a number 
of fictitious careers, military, marine, engineering, etc., which he 



Imagination and its Culture 215 

seemed to prefer to real life. On leaving college, however, he en- 
gaged in an active business career, was happily married, successful 
in his undertakings, and, having no time for daydreaming, seemed 
to have overcome the habit. A few years later, however, he began 
to suffer from insomnia, and at the same time became dissatisfied 
in regard to his business and household affairs. He took fefuge 
in his former imaginations, and though these were less absorbing 
than formerly, they gradually became more persistent and finally 
acquired a fixed form in which he lived an ideal life in a chateau 
which he gradually elaborated. He acquired an imaginary wife 
and children, and manifested less and less interest in his actual 
family. He continued nominally to conduct his business, which, 
however, was really managed by his staff of employees. Finally, 
on an occasion when someone accosted him by name and wished to 
confer with him on business, he replied, " He is at Chaville,'* the 
name of his imaginary chateau. This betrayal of himself in public, 
however, startled him into a realization of his actual condition, 
and fearing himself insane he was ready to do anything to banish 
his ideas, but found that they had become his masters, and that 
against his will he constantly relapsed into his dreams. After 
three months of medical treatment, with strict supervision night 
and day to prevent any lapse into dreaming, he recovered. 

As to the danger of daydreaming in a normal individual the 
following testimony of a man of twenty-six, who has carefully 
analyzed his own case, is of value. A. B. remembers that as early 
as the age of eight he was a dreamer, and says that his dreaming 
has been the happiest part of his life, but that ''it has made it very 
hard, sometimes next to impossible, to pay attention to anything 
dull or abstract. All the will power I can bring to bear only serves 
to pull my mind back to what it ought to be busy with instead of 
keeping it steadily focused there. If one could dream up to the 
limit when one ought to dismiss it entirely and attend to the sterner 
things of life, I think daydreaming would be a veritable gift from 
the gods. But it is a curse when the habit becomes so fixed that 
a man can't pay attention to things which perchance have little 
natural interest for him.'' 

Waste of time, — But even when daydreaming does not 
go so far as that of the above cases, it is hkely to be a serious 
drawback. Even though the emotional strain produced no 
physical and mental fatigue, even though dreaming did not 



2i6 Human Conduct 

grow upon one as a habit until it thoroughly possessed him, 
and even though one could at will rein himself in and begin 
his serious work, still much daydreaming would involve a 
costly waste of time. It replaces serious activity. '' Those 
who build castles in the air pay rent to other people.'^ 
Young persons commenting, in reply to Smith's question- 
naire, upon their own experience in daydreaming made such 
statements as these : 

I think children should try to stop themselves from having 
daydreams because when you are dreaming like that in school you 
might miss a whole lot of lessons. 

Last year I would sit in school and think of everything but my 
lessons. I failed in the final examinations. 

Dissatisfaction with routine, — There is no doubt, too, 
that daydreaming tends to make one dissatisfied with the 
prosaic work through which he must actually rise to achieve- 
ments worth while. Dreaming is so easy and work so hard 
that one tends to slip into the former as a by-path and short- 
cut to a phantom success. Says a girl of eighteen : 

I sometimes think it is wrong because it is apt to make you 
dissatisfied with your present life. 

and a nineteen-year-old boy confesses : 

The more I daydream the harder it is to come back to 
reality. 

Professor MacCunn, in his book on '^The Making of 
Character/' says : 

The other danger is daydreaming. There is an indolent and 
improvident cheerfulness which is content to feed on a diet of 
visionary schemes; and it is a faculty (or a failing) which often 
serves to carry its possessor lightly through much that is irritating, 
dull, or hideous in the actual life around him. At least it is an 
anodyne. But its weakness is disclosed in the hour of action. It 
is so easy, when the first sod of difficult duty has to be cut, to turn 
aside and indulge in easy imaginings of some fresh project. And 
so these builders of castles in the air grow old, cheerful to the end, 
cheerful — and ineffectual. 



Imagination and its Culture 217 

INTERPRETATIVE IMAGINATION. — But the dangers 
involved in daydreaming arise out of a misuse of a very val- 
uable power. Mind was developed in man as a forerunner 
of conduct, and is functioning normally when function- 
ing purposively. And functioning in this normal way the 
imagination is of the utmost value. We turn, then, to the 
second type of imagination. 

Need for interpretative imagination. — It is easy to see 
that without interpretative imagination the presentatior 
of any matter through language would be meaninglesSo 
The understanding of history is absolutely dependent upon 
it. If the narrative is to mean anything to us the 
incidents narrated must themselves go on before us. If 
we can not construct them in imagination, as they are 
related, the story can be for us little more than a jumble 
of words. Similarly, in literature the scenes described must 
appear vividly before us if we are to have more than fine 
phrases and rounded sentences. If we can not actually 
see Macbeth reaching for the phantom dagger, sit in the 
benches before Patrick Henry, as he delivers his famous 
address to the Virginia assembly, or stand with Longfellow 
on the bridge at midnight and share his feelings, these pas- 
sages can be but sterile to us. In the same way imagination 
is necessary for any real appreciation of painting, sculpture, 
or music. These can not be taken in merely on the sensuous 
level, but must be interpreted, supplemented, lived through 
as if they were the realities which they symbolize. The 
understanding of science, too, is dependent upon imagina- 
tion. Unless the descriptions and theories of astronomy, 
of physics, and of biology are translated into some concrete 
form, held in some way or other before the imagination, 
they are without real meaning. Even the simplest physical 
objects require for their appreciation a large play of imagina- 
tion, since none of them carry their whole meaning in 
themselves but require, as we saw fully in our first chap- 



2i8 Human Conduct 

ters, a large ideal supplement which the imagination must 
supply. 

Cultivation of interpretative imagination. — Since the 
interpretative imagination is so important it is worth while 
to cultivate it. This can be done, as in the case of other 
mental powers, by exercising it. Indeed the training of the 
interpretative imagination is practically the same thing as 
the training of mental imagery, about which we spoke in the 
preceding chapter ; only there our interest was in the quality 
of the images in terms of which the construct is built, while 
here our interest is merely in the fact that the matter should 
be represented in some appropriate concrete way. And 
our method here will be the same as that recommended 
there : i.e, in reading one should try to get concretely before 
him the scenes described. In history, geography, and liters 
ature there are abundant opportunities for doing this. A 
large proportion of what they set forth is concrete and lends 
itself readily to specific imagery. If, as he studies these, 
the student will repeatedly construct before himself the 
scenes set forth he will, in consequence, get their content far 
better and, at the same time, develop a valuable faculty^ 
— the power of interpretative imagination. 

CREATIVE IMAGINATION . — But the faculty which we are 
discussing reaches its acme in the creative imagination. Here 
one constructs to meet a purpose. Here he tries out in idea 
what he is later to try out in reality. For example, one is 
confronted by the necessity of crossing a stream of water 
where there is no bridge. What he does is first to think out 
a solution. He says to himself that if he had a rail he could 
use it as a bridge. He goes further and criticizes this ideal 
construct by asking himself whether a rail would be really 
long enough, whether it would be sufficiently strong, whether 

1 Of course faculty is not meant here in the old Aristotelian sense. The 
student acquainted with the present status of the doctrine of Formal Disci- 
pline may prefer to say "habit" or "ideal" rather than "faculty." 



Imagination and its Culture 219 

it would enable him to maintain his balance as he crosses, 
what sort of a rail would answer best; etc. When he has 
satisfied himself with his ideal construction he proceeds to 
hunt the actual rail with which to embody his plan in action. 
Just so, also, does the inventor of a machine proceed. He 
first constructs his machine in imagination and, by criticizing 
his construct, assures himself that it is adapted in every 
detail to work. Only afterwards does he take concrete 
materials and shap3 them so as to embody his plan. The 
same method is followed by the writer of a novel, the debater, 
the painter of a picture, the composer of a piece of music. 
Each has a carefully criticized plan in mind in advance of 
its embodiment in concrete materials. 

Development of imagination. — Since the creative imagi- 
nation is so important it is plainly desirable to develop it as 
effectively as possible. By comparing the constructive 
imagination of children with that of adults we can get a 
clue as to the direction which such development must take. 

Incoherence in children. — Constructive imagination is 
present from the early years of childhood. Indeed it is 
popularly supposed that it is more prominent in children 
than in adults. Judd has shown clearly that this is not 
true. The child has much less experience out of which to 
build, and his imagination could not have the scope which 
belongs to that of the adult. Any one who has observed the 
efforts of school children to make up stories for the language 
class can not help having been impressed with the poverty 
of their imagination. The stories which they can make up 
are extremely narrow in range and meager in content. Smith 
goes so far as to say that '^ Babies and idiots probably do not 
daydream, as they have not a sufficient store of mental im- 
pressions for reproductive combinations,^^ and they doubt- 
less imagine but narrowly for a number of years afterwards. 

But there is a characteristic of the child^s imagination 
which brings it the credit of being prolific — its lack of all re- 



2 20 Human Conduct 

straint. The child is wilhng to admit into her scene the 
most improbable elements. A stump is for her a piano, a 
stone is a cookstove, her doll is sick and a doll physician must 
be called in to attend it. She is not at all troubled about 
the inconsistency between these suppositions and the real 
behavior of the objects. She has not yet come to the point 
where either speculative interests or practical necessities 
oblige her to think her world together into a coherent whole. 
Hence she does not criticize her imaginings, but allows 
them to take as fantastic and as incoherent form as chance 
suggests. 

Coherence in developed imagination. — But the adult can 
not be satisfied with such inconsistent imaginings. He has 
got in the way of using these constructs as means of trying 
out his acts in advance, and has got into the habit of demand- 
ing that they shall represent reality. When he plans a house, 
a string of pebbles will not do for a wall, as it would not fulfill 
the purpose of a wall in the real world. Nor may his im- 
agined house be built of diamonds nor filled with impossible 
furniture. He must think all parts together coherently 
and make his construct consistent with the purpose of the 
house and with his financial resources. So, too, if he formu- 
lates a scientific theory. He may not leave in it impossible 
elements. It must be thought about and recast until it 
is wholly consistent within itself, in accord with other ac- 
cepted theories, and adequate to explain what it purports 
to explain. Similarly the novelist must make his piece of 
work consistent. Its characters must do only those things 
which are congruent with their natures. They must not 
suddenly change from bad to good or from homely to beauti- 
ful, nor may a fairy godmother with her wand, or the expedi- 
ent of finding a pot of gold, be admitted as forces. The 
whole thing must fit in, too, at least reasonably well with 
the scheme of nature as we know it. All of this requires 
that the mature imagination be Jiot allowed to run riot, 



Imagination and its Culture 221 

but that its products be, in the making, worked over, recast, 
forged into coherent wholes. All that occurs to the child, 
and much more besides, may suggest itself, but much of it is 
at once rejected. Such controlled imagination may seem 
more prosaic and cramped than the free imagination of 
childhood, but it is in fact immeasurably richer and more 
fruitful. 

Constructive guidance of daydreaming. — The universal 
tendency to daydream requires, then, not inhibition, bu^ 
only slight redirection to utilize it for the cultivation of that 
power of creative imagination which has been so potent in 
raising man above the lower animals, or in lifting one man 
above another. You dream, if you are like other youths, 
of some great invention which you will make, and doubtless 
have in mind some vague notion of what it is to be. But 
soon your thoughts turn from the invention as such to dreams 
about the resultant wealth and honor which are to come to 
you. Let these latter take care of themselves for a while. 
Earn the money before you spend it. Hold yourself to your 
invention. Think out its details. When you are baffled 
about some scientific principle that is involved, hasten to 
look it up at your first opportunity. When next your mind 
returns to the invention, build upon what you last thought 
out. Do not spend all of your time in retracing what you 
covered last time, but hasten on to the details not yet cleared 
up. Each time take note, mental or otherwise, of what 
you have so far clearly worked out and keep it as a basis for 
further constructive dreaming in the future. Again, you 
dream of yourself as delivering a great oration on a new 
constitution for your state. Then your mind turns to the 
crowds of people and the applause. Never mind these ; 
they will come in their own time. In the meantime think 
out your speech in detail. Hasten home and look up the 
points upon which your information is deficient. Make 
notes of what you have worked out so far, and keep them 



222 Human Conduct 

to be further perfected later. You picture yourself as nurse, 
college professor, or author. Let the thoughts of your 
reputation alone for a while, or, at most, let them be your 
incentive for work, and keep your imagination tied down to 
the task of constructing definite plans by which you can 
begin to realize your dream. It is through dreaming such 
controlled, s^^stematized dreams that geniuses are made. 

Training through everyday affairs. — Besides getting into 
the habit of subordinating imagination to a purpose, and criti- 
cizing its constructs, there are other means of exercising and 
developing it. There is one field where opportunities for 
doing this come to us every moment, which we usually fail 
to appreciate — that is, the field of ordinary daily activities. 
When we decide what clothes to wear for the day, when we 
undertake to nail two boards together, to hoe our garden, 
to make a snowball, or even to raise our foot for the next 
step, we are employing constructive imagination. For an 
image of what our act is to be, and how it is to result, must 
precede the act and guide it. The act, that is, must be 
performed in imagination before it is performed in reality^ 
if it is to rise in the least above the level of wholly automatic 
acts. And of these countless acts in which imagination plays 
a part there are dozens each day elaborate enough to demand 
considerable constructive activity to think them through 
and foresee clearly their results before undertaking them. 
So whoever thinks as he works — turns to each detail with 
a notion of what he wishes to accomplish — and does not 
merely apply the trial and error method, characteristic of 
the lower orders of men and animals, is cultivating his imagi- 
nation as he thus works and thinks. 

Another and broader level on which one can exercise and 
develop the constructive imagination is in science and art. 
This should supplement that thinking about one's work of 
which we spoke in our last paragraph. It is a good school 
practice for the teacher to read to her class part of a story, 



Imagination and its Culture 223 

and then have the class finish it. Writing sequels to stories, 
or anticipating how a novel will end, provides the same sort 
of training. It is also worth while, for the sake of cultivat- 
ing constructive imagination, for one to write stories of his 
own, plan essays, debates, and orations, or to think himself 
through difficult mathematical problems or complex mechani- 
cal situations. 

Social relations. — Another level on which imagination 
needs to be cultivated is that of our social relations. Pov- 
erty of imagination often makes it impossible for us to sym- 
pathize as we should with others. This is particularly true 
of children. Why is the small boy cruel to animals? It is 
not because he is instinctively cruel, but because he does 
not appreciate the suffering of his victim. He is delighted 
with the way in which the mouse wiggles when he tortures 
him, or in which the cat squalls when he twists her tail. 
It is the activity alone that pleases him. He lacks entirely 
the power of imagination necessary to put himself in the 
animaFs place. And the same thing is true, though to a 
less extent, among adults. To men and women in favored 
social positions it does not seem to occur that those in subordi- 
nate positions have feelings, and often they deal with these 
latter as if they were dogs. (I wonder, by the way, whether 
w^e might not get some new light if we could put ourselves 
in the average dog's skin for about half an hour.) 

Very few people ever make any effort to put themselves in 
the shoes of one whom some great calamity has overtaken, as 
some supreme sorrow or, more particularly, some major 
punishment for crime. We feel a certain shyness in their 
presence, but draw our skirts together, shudder, — and 
perhaps console ourselves by believing that they can not 
possibly have quite the same feelings about the matter as 
we would have. When a punishment is very terrible even 
the would-be criminal can not any longer imagine himself 
suffering it, and, in consequence, when penalties are made 



224 Human Conduct 

excessively severe they often have less power to deter from 
crime than have milder ones. In the same way a man who 
has taken to drinking, or to other dangerous vices, lacks 
imagination to see himself at the logical end of his course — 
in the gutter with the confirmed drunkard, in the hospital 
with his bod}^ eaten up with syphilis, or behind the bars 
with the detected criminal. There is no doubt that the 
tortures inflicted under the Inquisition in the Middle Ages 
were made possible by the inability of the leaders to put 
themselves in the place of the sufferers, and doubtless most 
of the hardness and apparent narrowness of the present is 
due to the same inability. It is an excellent practice — 
indispensable for the cultivation of a balanced personality — 
to try repeatedly to put yourself into the shoes of others, 
until you can come to appreciate the fact that they feel just 
about as you would under like conditions and can govern 
yourself accordingly. 

Ideals. — But the highest level upon which creative im- 
agination can function and develop is in the formation of 
ideals. All ideals are formulated here. They outrun at- 
tainments. They are the stars to which we hitch our wagons. 
Our ideal for ourselves is some state, far transcending that 
of our present attainment, in which we picture ourselves. 
Thus to establish goals beyond, toward which we may direct 
our efforts, is the great moral function of the imagination. 
He whom imagination does not plague with ideals is des- 
tined to grovel in the mire, both in body and in spirit, for 
no one can rise out of this except he be led on by these beacon 
lights. 

The youth who does not look up will look down, and the spirit 
that does not soar is destined, perhaps, to grovel. 

Build on and make thy castles high and fair, 
Rising and reaching upward to the skies ; 
Listen to voices in the upper air, 
Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries. 



Imagination and its Culture 225 

Governor Brumbaugh, writing some years ago on the work 
of the imagination in the formation of ideals, says : 

Thus the soul builds only chosen elements, rejecting all that 
are broken or unlovely or unworthy, into an ideal which it cherishes 
vastly more than any real because it is the best combination it 
can make from the best elements it can choose out of its whole 
treasury of knowledge. The function of this power of the soul is 
to create our ideals. God wants us to enjoy not only the finest 
scenes that fall within our ken, he also wants us to enjoy the finest 
things our souls can entertain. . . . Thus by eliminating the 
things we care least for, by substituting others that we care for, 
we build, bit by bit, our beautiful ideals — the soul images that so 
potently influence our lives. . . . Our minds are like the river 
that ** glideth at its own sweet will." Thus we make the structure 
which at last we carve into a life of deeds. Without ideals there 
could be no progress, only endless and changeless, dreary and 
hopeless, monotony. Without ideals our minds would become 
like the wayside pool — stagnant and deadly. With ideals they 
become like the mountain rills that leap from moss-rimmed rocks 
in endless showers as silver spray clothed in rainbows and bearing 
in their sweet life beauty and grandeur. Happy the child whose 
unfettered spirit may build after its own plans the terraced slope, 
the sun-crowned spires, the carved pillars, and the golden portals 
of the temple of truth. Into it his spirit may pass to find the 
sweetest communions, and to gather inspiration for the highest 
achievements. It is the soul's most holy place. Here the 
divinity that is in us is enshrined. Here we may worship and 
adore. 

Ideals must he intellectually criticized and emotionalized, — 
Our ideals are first our ideas of what our future is to be. 
In their less serious status they are merely daydreams to 
which we scarcely expect ever to attain, and which we do 
little or nothing to force into reality. But in their more 
serious status they become much more than this. We 
first evolve them out of the stuff from which dreams come. 
Then we criticize them, and eliminate from them all incon- 
sistent elements and all wild fancies which we know to be 
beyond our possibilities of realization. What results is a 

Q 



2 26 Human Conduct 

fairly definite idea of what we would be, which idea is pos- 
sessed of a special grip upon us, as if we belonged peculiarly 
to it. Under such conditions our idea becomes our ideal. 
The ideal, thus, is no mere, inert idea, but an idea warmed 
and made dynamic by emotion. 

And so to the formation of ideals there are two aspects. 
First is that intellectual clarification of which we just spoke. 
No one should merely fall upon his ideals. He should think 
about the goals which present themselves as ends of his 
strivings. He should select those which seem appropriate 
in his sphere. He should recast these so as to adapt them 
to his own individuality, free them from inconsistencies, 
assure himself that they are valid, rational, and possible 
of at least relative attainment. But such intellectual clari- 
fication of one^s plan of life is not sufficient. It must be 
accompanied by the other step — sustained inspiration. It 
is this emotional dynamic that gives propelling force to one^s 
plans and enables him to stick through the hard, monotonous 
toil by which his plans are to be realized. Such inspiration 
one can cultivate if he will. He can put himself in touch 
with friends who have inspiring personalities. He can seek 
opportunities for attending inspiring lectures. Particularly 
he can find strength in literature. There is a mass of litera- 
ture which can renew again one's confidence and one's deter- 
mination, of which it is enough to mention here ^\Self-Help'' 
by Smiles, and the stimulating books of Orison Swett Mar- 
den. It is said that Roosevelt, when a young man, always 
carried with him a copy of ^^ Plutarch's Lives,'' and it is a 
matter of history that the most effective soldiers of modern 
times — Cromwell's ^' Ironsides" — were constant readers of 
the Bible. There is no doubt that much of the power so evi- 
dent in these men came from this reading of inspirational litera- 
ture. It is not ideas alone, but ideas warmed with emotion, 
with inspiration, that get carried into action, and no one who 
wishes to become a power in the world can afford to forego 



Imagination and its Culture 227 

a single bit of such inspiration that it is possible for him to 
get. 

Must he carried into action, — But ideals thus matured 
and emotionalized are good only on one condition — that 
they be carried into action. Otherwise they are morbid 
and destructive of personality. In a very famous passage, 
which every one should read, Professor James urged us to 
form the habit of carrying our emotions into concrete action 
if we would be helped instead of injured by them,^ and Mr. 
T. L. Smith says : 

We know that music, art, and literature are much indebted 
to the dreamers. But the mind must first be well stored, and 
there must be energy for the realization of the dreams. It is never 
to the idle dreamer that the creative impulse comes. Mozart 
and Raphael were dreamers, but the harmonies of the one and the 
visions of the other belong to the world only because their dreams 
received embodiment by alliance with the drudgery of practical 
work. Napoleon and Mohammed were, each in his own way, 
dreamers, but they were also men of action. 

Orison Swett Marden writes : 

Did Garfield sit still and dream of the days when his ideal 
should be fulfilled? If that had been his spirit and quality, he 
would have spent his whole life on the tow-path. But he labored 
persistently, studied hard, and "made things happen,'' instead 
of "waiting for something to turn up." When he wanted to im- 
prove his education at the seminary, he cut wood for fifty days 
in order to make fifty dollars to meet the expense. When he 
desired still higher culture, he became bell-ringer and general 
sweeper at the institute, so that he might pay his way. And when 
he went at last to college he managed, by strenuous purpose, and 
unflinching industry, to do in three years what most men could 
hardly accomplish in six. A man like that can do anything. It 
was as easy for Garfield to be President as to be mule-driver, — ■ 
because he was always fitting himself for nobler service and more 
splendid achievement. He was a man of great dreams and lofty 
ideals, but he had the indomitable Avill which enabled him to 
reahze and accomplish them. 

1 Psychology ; Briefer Course, pages 147-148. 



2 28 Human Conduct 



EXERCISES 

1. Imagination is often thought of sHghtingly. Should it be? 
Why? 

2. Try to think of some product of imagination which does 
not draw upon the past for all of its elements. 

3. Is it true that no one should invent a new scheme except 
after having informed himself fully of what others have done in 
this field? How does this apply to school essays and debates? 

4. What advantages can you see in daydreaming? What 
disadvantages? How is it related to the formation of ideals? 

5. Can the developed imagination create or enjoy fairy stories 
and yet conform to its mature standards? How? 

6. Show, in more detail than is done in the text, how imagina- 
tion is needed for the full appreciation of music, painting, and other 
forms of art. Also for history and literature. How develop it? 

7. Of what value has imagination been in the development of 
science? (See Creighton's *' Introductory Logic,'' page 283.) 

8. Of what use is imagination to (a) a football coach in planning 
plays? (6) To a speaker in preparing for a debate? (c) To the 
inventor? How can it be developed? 

9. How can a boy in a shop cultivate the kind of imagination 
which leadership in his trade will demand? 

10. Is the author's recommendation as to turning daydreaming 
to constructive use feasible ? 

11. Is the author correct in attributing lack of sympathy, and 
failure to check dangerous habits, to lack of imagination? 

12. How are ideals formed ? Can one have ideals which he does 
not put into practice ? If so, what is their effect ? 

13. Is the author right in intimating that ideals should be chosen 
with reference to one's sphere in life, or should the choice of ideals 
be unconditioned ? 

14. To what extent do you believe one can make one's ideals 
a greater force by emotionalizing them in the way in which the text 
suggests ? 

15. Some one has advised us to **Now and then be idle; sit 
apart and think." What is the value of such periods of contempla- 
tion? What should be their relation to action? (See Mackenzie, 
** Manual of Ethics," pages 376-88.) 



CHAPTER XVI 
ATTENTION 

Consciousness as hanging together in a sheet. — In our 

preceding discussion we have seen how present experience 
is built up out of elements furnished by sensation, or out of 
those recalled from the past. We spoke as if the constructs 
stood in consciousness clear-cut and self-contained. We 
must now confess that that way of speaking is not strictly 
true, but was resorted to only by way of convenience. We 
shall see instead that consciousness hangs together in a large 
sheet, and that the central idea is always linked up with a 
fringe of others. 

In perception, — A percept, as we have long ago seen, 
can not exist in simple and isolated form. Consider your 
state of mind in perceiving a table. The table is not alone 
in consciousness. You see it in contrast with the surround- 
ing parts of the wall and floor, and with other pieces of 
furniture. Indeed without such contrast it could have no 
meaning, for you define it — determine its limits — by 
setting it over against what it is not. So the ideas of these 
surrounding objects must be in mind along with the idea of 
table, only in the background, in the ^^ fringe. ^^ A notion 
of the various uses to which the table may be put, and of 
your previous experiences with it, are also present in nas- 
cent form, and they help to color the central idea. Without 
them, too, the table could have no meaning to you. Some 
feeling of the temperature of the room and of the noises 
going on outside are in your mind. There are, too, traces 
still persisting of the experiences which engaged you just be- 

229 



230 Human Conduct 

fore you came to look at the table, and some foreshadowing 
of what you are next to do is coloring your present conscious- 
ness. It is into that broad blanket of consciousness that 
the central idea of table is firmly woven. 

In recalled experience. — And if no percept can stand alone, 
neither can any image recalled from the past. For such 
image must be called into mind by the idea which preceded 
it, in conformity with the laws of association. But this idea 
which led it in did not immediately give way to the new- 
comer. It only stepped into the background and remains to 
color the present idea in the same way in which the vaguely 
sensed surroundings of a perceived object modify the mean- 
ing of that object. Indeed not only the idea in mind im- 
mediately before, but the whole train of ideas for the last 
few minutes, or even longer, have left their color upon the 
present one. So, too, the turn which thought is next to 
take modifies what is now in mind. The next ideas are 
being already born, and are casting back their light just as 
those that are past are casting theirs forward. And so again, 
as in the case of perception, consciousness hangs together 
in a broad sheet. 

Consciousness always in motion. — And this sheet, as it 
is w^oven, moves on continually through its loom. No- 
where does it stop while consciousness lasts. As soon as 
you have reached a decision on the point in question about 
the table, you pass on either to some other object or to some 
new problem about the table. Consciousness can not stop 
in its course without dying out. It is a process, not a thing. 
Its very essence is movement — classifying, relating, choos- 
ing — and when it ceases, even for a moment, to move it 
ceases for so long to exist. 

Consciousness a stream. — We have compared conscious- 
ness to a sheet of which the whole woof and web are woven 
about the interesting center. But Professor James sug- 
gested a much better analogy, which psychologists have 



Attention 231 

generally accepted. This great Harvard professor pointed 
out that consciousness is like a stream. It is made up of 
elements, yet these elements fuse together into one unbroken 
whole ; it is not one narrow line, but any imaginary line 
drawn through it is buttressed on either side by a mass of 
supporting elements ; it is flexible and can turn to right or 
left into whatever channel is most open to receive it ; it 
leaves no gaps and makes no sudden or unexplainable turns, 
but passes b}^ continuous course from one stage to the next ; 
and it moves continually on by the observer, some places 
faster, some slower, but never returns to retrace its course. 
Its waves. — Now this analogy of the stream lends itself 
particularly well to the matter which now concerns us — 



CHAIRS DESK 

/WALL FLOOR CLOCKN 
PAS"^ CONVERSATIONS 
TEMPERATURE OF ROOM "' NOISES OUTSIDE OF 'ROOM . 

Fig. 25. 

attention. A stream may be piled up into a wave. Such 
wave may be higher or lower, but it always has a crest which 
is supported upon a relatively broad base. Just so does 
consciousness behave. It is never a mere flat sheet. Center 
and margin do not remain on the same level. Instead, 
the central idea rises up '' head and shoulders ^^ above the 
others, while these latter group themselves around andj 
below their chief and support it. In the experience with 
the table, spoken of above, the central idea stood out strong 
and clear above the surroundings. It was the crest of a 



232 Human Conduct 

wave ; the more or less hazy elements in the background 
made up the base upon which the crest was supported. We 
may represent the situation diagrammatically in the preceding 
figure.^ When, however, you turn from an interest in the 
table to one in a chair in the room the wave shifts its char- 
acter. Now an element previously at the base of the wave 
rises into the crest, and the former crest sinks back into the 
less favored body. This situation is represented in the fol- 
lowing figure.^ But always the stream of consciousness is 

/past CONVERSATIONSN 
WALL:-^^ CLOCK."-"" FLOOR 

noises outside 0f> room " -'temperature" of^room\.- 

Fig. 26. 

piled up into a wave with something or other at the sum- 
mit — in the dominating position — and other elements in 
the base supporting it. 

Attention. — Now it is this piling up of consciousness into 
a wave that gives us attention. Some object stands out 
clearly while all others are in the background, ^^ Atten- 
tion,^^ says Bagley, '^ is best described as that state of con- 
sciousness that presents a focus and a margin.'^ 

Attention is, therefore, not a state of mind which we have 
only occasionally. It is merely one way of describing con- 
sciousness at every moment of its existence, so that we shall 
be here only viewing from a new angle the same old phe- 

* These figures were suggested by analogous ones in Betts' The Mind and 
its Education, page 7. 



Attention 233 

nomenon with which we have been deahng all along. When 
we thought of consciousness as containing elements brought 
over from the past, and recognized as belonging to the past, 
we called it memory ; when we thought of it as rebuilding 
these old elements into relatively new constructs we called 
it imagination ; when, long ago, we viewed it as interpreting 
situations with which we are confronted, we called it apper- 
ception. In this last case we saw quite plainly that con- 
sciousness is piled up in a certain way — is organized in a 
certain fashion — but our interest was there in the fact that 
what the presentation shall mean to us — how we shall in- 
terpret it — is determined by how the mass of consciousness 
is, at the moment, drawn up. Here we have that same 
phenomenon of the piling up of consciousness, only our in- 
terest is now merely in the fact that it is piled up. And it 
is this fact that it is piled up — that it surges up into some 
clear experience at its crest and groups a fringe of less dear 
elements about this — that we designate by attention. 

Degrees of attention. — Attention, then, is always present. 
There is no such thing as inattention during our waking 
hours. What we call inattention is only attention in some 
other direction than that which is, at the moment, desired. 
Attention may, however, vary in intensity. Normally there 
is a considerable piling up of the stream into a fairly pro- 
nounced wave. But above this normal level attention may 
increase in intensity until even the most powerful stimuli, 
not directly related to what is at the focus, go unnoticed. 
In this extreme case one would neglect alike sensations of 
intense pain and pleasure, and would even be impervious to 
signals of imminent danger. Here the wave in the stream of 
consciousness has risen so high as to be practically a straight, 
vertical line. Similarly, below the normal level, attention 
may drop until it is almost equally receptive to all stimuli. 
In this equally extreme case nothing stands out with pro- 
nounced clearness, but the whole thought process tones 



234 Human Conduct 

down to a state of vague and sleepy reverie. In its com- 
plete form this ^^ diffused attention '^ would bring a con- 
dition of absolute mental blank in which all intelligence 
would be swallowed up. Here the wave has flattened out 
until it has become practically a straight, horizontal line. 
Seldom if ever do we reach either of these extremes, but be- 
tween them attention assumes, at various times and in various 
individuals, all degrees of intensity. 

Value of concentrating attention. — Now it is evident that 
a high degree of intensity (that is, concentration) is neces- 
sary for effectiveness. Attention has been compared to 
the passing of the sun's rays through a convex lens. With- 
out the intervention T)f the lens the rays may have fallen 
for hours upon a piece of paper without producing any notice- 
able effect. But let them once be passed through the 
converging lens and almost immediately the paper will burst 
into, flame. So with consciousness. One may drone over a 
lesson for hours, with attention scattered, ancl make little 
or no headway. But let him strenuousty concentrate on 
his work, let him ^^ gather up all his mental forces and mass 
them on the subject before him,'' and he can accomplish more 
in minutes than he previously could in hours. 

Attention, to change the figure, is like a gang of workmen 
lifting at a heavy piece of timber. So long as they do not all 
lift together and lift hard the beam does not move at all, 
and their work goes for naught. But when they all heave 
together with all their might, and then all rest together, 
the beam gives way to their efforts. With vivid attention 
all the brain pathways related to the topic in mind are 
open into the central sj^stem — are trembling with nascent 
excitation — and are ready to supply their contribution to 
the solution of the problem on the slightest evidence that it 
is needed. The whole nervous system is on tiptoe, so to 
speak, and has its readiness directed to the matter that is 
at the center of consciousness. Indeed not only are the 



Attention 235 

outlying pathways in a state of readiness^ but they are pour- 
ing in their contribution in the form of clarification of re- 
lations between the object at the center and those in the 
fringe, so that the object attended to takes on a high degree 
of clearness and of definiteness. Under strenuous atten- 
tion, in other words, all the resources of mind and brain are 
working mightily together toward a single end. With less 
strenuous attention many relevant pathways are shunted 
around the center and all are characterized by a greater 
slowness and lethargy. Time spent on dawdling is worse 
than wasted. Unless one is ready to think hard it is scarcely 
worth his while to think about his problem at all. A col- 
lege professor, according to Betts, once said to his faithful 
but poorly prepared class: ^^ Judging from your worn and 
tired appearance, young people, you are putting in twice 
too many hours in a study. ^^ But when the class brightened 
up with encouragement he added, ^^ But, judging from your 
preparation, you do not study quite half hard enough.'' 
And Betts goes on to say : 

Happy is the student who, starting in on his lesson rested and 
fresh, can study with such concentration that an hour of steady 
application will leave him mentally exhausted and limp. That is 
one hour of triumph for him, no matter what else he may have 
accomplished or failed to accomplish during the time. He can 
afford an occasional pause for rest, for difficulties will melt rapidly 
away before him. He possesses one key to successful achievement. 

Kinds of attention. — So attention should be fully con- 
centrated upon the topic in hand if anything worth while is 
to be accomplished. But, unfortunately, attention has whims 
of its own, and does not always agree to be thus ^^ reason- 
able.'' In spite of our wishes we do not find it by any 
means easy to keep attention concentrated upon one 
thing. In fact we must recognize three stages or kinds 
of attention in this respect: (1) Involuntary; (2) non- 
voluntary; and (3) voluntary. In the first attention goes 



236 Human Conduct 

to some object in spite of us. Thus as we sit studying, and 
wishing not to be distracted by anything, our attention is 
called away by the slamming of a door or by some attrac- 
tive conversation which we overhear. In the second — non- 
voluntary (sometimes called the spontaneous) — we neither 
force our attention nor fight against it. Thus to a fas- 
cinating book, to an interesting lecture, or to an attractive 
picture we may give this non- voluntary attention. Volun- 
tary attention we give consciously and under the direction 
of our wills. We give it when we buckle ourselves down, in 
spite of resistance, to the study of the lesson which repels us. 
In order that we may know how to reap to the full the bless- 
ings of concentration, spoken of above, we must study the 
nature of each and the conditions of its control. 

Involuntary attention. — Involuntary attention takes care 
of its own rights. It gets a hearing whether we wish to give 
it or not. It is commanded by such things as loud or un- 
usual noises, large or strange objects, rapidly moving objects, 
brightly colored objects, objects which relate to some press- 
ing instinct, as that of self-preservation or reproduction, 
problems which, for subjective reasons, weigh down heavily 
upon us — as some great anxiety — and many others of a like 
nature. 

Biological explanation of involuntary attention. — This 
list explains why involuntary attention is permitted to re- 
main such a spoiled child of nature. There are evident 
biological reasons why the objects which the list includes 
should have such an unshakable claim upon attention. For, 
throughout the history of the race, just these have been the 
major danger signals. The large, the strange, or the other- 
wise spectacular object threatens destruction, and one must 
immediately drop all else and adjust himself to the pressing 
situation which it signals. Likewise the loud or strange 
noise betokens possible danger, and the near, and, especially, 
the rapidly moving objects are the more threatening because 



Attention 237 

of the quickness with which they could overtake one. Hence 
these classes of objects have come to get an imperious con- 
trol over attention. Unless everything else were dropped 
at once and adjustment were made to these objects, the 
result would not infrequently be fatal. And so the process 
of biological evolution has, by way of protection, and hence 
preservation for the individual, implanted the instinct of 
attending to them so deeply in man^s nature that it can not 
be denied. Throughout racial history it has been indis- 
pensable, for very real dangers beset alike the lower animals 
and men on every hand. Under civilized life these dangers 
have been immensely lessened for man, so that, in ninety- 
nine cases out of a hundred, the only adjustment necessary 
is to decide quickly that the matter is of no importance, and 
to settle back at once into one^s work. But in the hundredth 
case the instinct saves one from destruction by giving him 
effective warning against a coming automobile or train, a 
falling brick, or the beginning of a disastrous fire. It is 
true that the instinct often proves a handicap through in- 
terfering continually with one's attention to serious prob- 
lems by all sorts of useless distractions. Yet nature will 
retain it as a compelling instinct so long as it has a function 
to perform — and doubtless long after — and our only rehef 
is in learning how to modify and control it, not in trying to 
eliminate it. 

It is due to this instinct that you are disturbed by any 
one's moving about or talking in the study hall. It is use- 
less to blame yourselves for being disturbed ; neither you nor 
any one else can help it. Something like the same distraction 
is inevitable where recitations are held in the room where 
others are studying. In the same way your attempt to study 
in the living room at home is likely to be largely unsuccessful. 
Even apparently trivial matters may serve as distractions. 
The story is told of a man who found himself one day unable 
to work effectively in his study. He was restless and dis- 



238 Human Conduct 

turbed, yet could not tell why. Later he found that the 
cause was a nail, with a large bright head, which had recently 
been driven into the wall, and which had not yet come to. 
fit in smoothly with his mental background. In Barbour ^s 
'^ Harvard-Yale Foot-Ball Story ^^ there is a similar instance. 
The star player could not play in his usual style. Something 
interfered with the full concentration of his wits and his 
physical energy on the game. The cause was found to be a 
kite which a small boy was flying high above the field. 

Control of involuntary attention. — One can partly over- 
come these distractions by becoming accustomed to the situ- 
ations which cause them. After one has been for some 
days in the noisy room he is not so much disturbed by the 
noise. Because it is no longer a new situation it does not 
any longer belong to that class of objects wdiich give bio- 
logical danger signals, and hence does not any longer appeal 
to the old instinct. Yet this applies only to those elements 
which are regularly recurring — the everyday routine of the 
room, such as that of the recitation. Any irregular talk- 
ing or moving about remains inevitably distracting. Of 
course one can also fortify himself against these distractions 
by strong resolution, but he does so at the cost of nervous 
energy and of a certain unfortunate division of his intel- 
lectual and volitional powers. One can also in time — and 
should — cultivate something of a generalized habit of dis- 
regarding certain kinds of distractions. But the best solu- 
tion is to be found in keeping down the distractions. Stu- 
dents should cooperate with teachers and parents in reducing 
to a minimum talking and other noises and moving about 
the room. At home the pupil should have a quiet room for 
study, which is not also used as a living room. And finally 
he should conform as largely as possible to a fixed routine — 
a fixed time and place for each task, even to the extent of 
the same chair and the same position with reference to the 
light, study-table, etc. This will save loss from division of 



Attention 239 

energy between his work and new and hence distracting 
experiences. 

Non-voluntary attention. — The second type of attention 
— the non-voluntary — also requires no forcing. Interest 
leads it on. During most of our time our interest is of this 
spontaneous kind. As we daydream, as we make more 
serious plans which we pursue with interest, as we read a 
book which holds us in its grip, as we hear a lecture to which 
we need make no effort to attend, as we listen to the con- 
versation of our friends, it is this second type of attention 
that we are giving. Such attention is normal. If directed 
into proper channels it constitutes the ideal functioning of 
the mind. The other two kinds of attention can function 
for only a few moments at a time. They can only jerk our 
thoughts to some new topic. But, if we are to stay by this 
new topic for any fuller consideration, attention must begin 
forthwith to function in this spontaneous way. We must 
see, then, what are the conditions of this normal functioning 
of the mind. 

Control of non-voluntary attention: (1) Apperception. — 
The first condition is that of apperception. Before we can 
be normally held by any matter we must bring to it the 
necessary past experience to enable us to understand it and 
to appreciate its value. We will not long attend to any 
matter which is outside the range of our experience and our 
sense of values. This is illustrated by the case of some west- 
ern Indians who visited for the first time a great industrial 
city. They were shown the steam shovel at work, sky- 
scrapers in process of erection, and many other mechanical 
wonders of the age, but they stood in stolid indifference. 
When, however, their eyes chanced to catch some repair 
men climbing telephone poles they were transported with 
excitement and wonder. The rapid pole climbing lay near 
enough to their own experiences to be appreciated, and 
hence to be followed with eager attention, while they found 



240 Human Conduct 

in the more complex situations too little which they could 
understand, or in which they could imagine themselves 
participating, to draw them on. So whoever would secure 
and hold spontaneous attention to any matter must so 
select it and so present it as to conform to those laws of ap- 
perception which we discussed in our early chapters. 

(2) Interest. — The second condition is interest. This 
really grows out of the first. Interest and non-voluntary 
attention are not to be separated. Where there is interest 
there is, with no further ado, attention ; where interest is 
lacking, attention too will at once lag. In fact, as we saw 
in our third chapter, interest is nothing else than the dynamic 
outgoing of the self after what it feels is needed to fill a gap 
in its perfection. It is an intellectual hunger which bestirs 
consciousness to a strenuous effort to lasso the game which 
it foresees will appease its appetite. And, of course, so 
long as this appetite is kept keen by getting from moment 
to moment only such tastes of its prey as keep its mouth 
watering, consciousness will continue to plunge on in una- 
bated pursuit, no matter through how tangled a jungle it 
be led. And this outgoing the mind does in the form of 
spontaneous attention. Quarreling with inattention is next 
to useless. If one's attention balks he needs somehow to 
seek an interest in what he is doing, or put one there. If 
he is failing to get the attention of others he needs to look 
to himself for the cause. If he can make the matter interest- 
ing — make it appeal to his auditors as worth while — he 
will get attention as a matter of course. If he can not do so, 
he can not get attention for any length of time by demanding 
it, nor can even his auditors do much to help him in such arti- 
ficial battle. 

(3) Development of the Object. — And finally, the de- 
velopment of the object is a condition of spontaneous atten- 
tion. There have been men so foolish as to hold up, as the 
ideal, the ability to attend for half an hour to the point of a 



Attention 



241 



cambric needle. Now in fact such sustained attention to an 
undeveloping object is neither possible nor desirable. If 
one succeeded in doing it, it would bring him not wisdom but 
stupor. In fact to attend strenuously, for even a few 
minutes, to a meaningless object will throw one into the 
hypnotic state. The only condition under which one can 
attend is that the object develop — reveal different aspects 
of itself at each succeeding moment. As soon as it stops 
doing this so soon will attention inevitably wander from it 
to something that is new. 

The effect of development can readily be seen by study- 
ing the following stereoscopic slide. Hold it before the 




Fig. 27. 



face so as to be parallel to the line of the two eyes. Then 
look with the right eye at the side of the screen in front of 
that eye, and with the left eye at the left side. (You can do 
this by fancying that you are looking through the screen 
at some distant object.) The two screens will now swim 
into one, but you will not see both sets of lines at the same 
time. The two sets will alternate at nearly regular in- 
tervals. But if you will try to find new facts about one of 
them — will study the angle at which the lines are set, 
their distance apart, their length, etc. — you will find your- 



242 



Human Conduct 




self able to keep it before you much longer. But as soon as 
you stop looking in it for new facts attention to it will weaken, 
and it will at once give way to the other set of lines. If 
you do not succeed in getting results with that figure try 

Fig. 28. Try whether you 
can continue to see it for 
a longer time as a rail- 
road tunnel, by studying 
how long the tunnel is, 
whether the farther end 
is quite square, etc. 

It is of the utmost im- 
portance that conversa- 
tionalist, toacher, speaker, 
or writer take account of 
this necessity that the ob- 
ject develop. If one is to 
hold attention he must 
If he stop a minute too long 
— if he linger to explain or illustrate any matter after it 
has been understood — he does so at the risk of tiring out 
the attention of his auditors. At such moments the mind 
is finding no new phase of the subject to engage it, and it 
will be strongly disposed to w^ander away to something that 
is new, and will tend to remain in pursuit of its more lively 
prey. On the other hand, neither may the speaker move 
too rapidly. If he does so he will surpass his auditors' 
ability to understand, and again the subject will have es- 
sentially ceased to develop for them. For it is the auditors' ' 
own thought about the subject that must develop, and, so 
soon as it goes beyond their ability to understand, it becomes 
to them a mere blank — as sterile as if it were in itself motion- 
less — no matter how logical its development may seem to 
the speaker. An exposition too meagerly developed for one 
really to understand puts him to sleep just as surely as one 



Fig. 28. 



move on with his exposition. 



Attention 243 

that is tediously overelaborated. So success demands that 
one move on with his topic at just the pace at which the 
specific audience before him can follow. If he miss this 
pace in either direction, he will inevitably forfeit the at- 
tention of his hearers. 

Voluntary attention. — Spontaneous attention is the most 
desirable type, but unfortunately the channels in which it 
tends to run are often not the right ones for our purpose. 
Then there must be brought into play our third kind — 
voluntary attention — that which follows the direction of 
the will. Every one knows what it is to give this sort of 
attention. Every one has met many occasions when he 
found it necessary to jerk his attention back from some 
pleasant course which it was following, and force it in some 
direction which, at the timx, was not attractive. This is 
made necessary by the fact that one has plans for one^s 
life which can not be realized by drifting. Their realiza- 
tion often demands that one turn himself into steep and 
thorny paths and drag himself through them by strong 
force of will. And the ability to give voluntary attention 
is indispensable for this. Whoever does not possess this 
ability will be left hopelessly stranded on the barren shores 
of Wish Island. 

Attention must hecoine spontaneous. — But, important as 
it is, voluntary attention can be given for but a short time 
at once. It is probable that, .by mere force of will, one can 
not hold attention to an object for more than a very few 
seconds. After this time fatigue becomes so great that 
either one's thoughts inevitably wander from the object 
or he is thrown into the hypnotic state. What we take 
for sustained voluntary attention is in reality a series of 
instances of jerking a wandering attention back to the 
object, not one prolonged and unbroken force of will. All 
that voluntar^^ attention can do is to give the object a chance 
by getting the mind introduced to it ; it must then hold the 



244 Human Conduct 

mind by its own entertaining qualities, though the will may 
jerk the mind back to the object again and again, and thus 
give it repeated opportunities to hold attention by its own 
worth. But in every case the non-voluntary attention must, 
in a very short time, take up the work begun by the voluntary. 

This, in fact, it can ordinarily do. There is scarcely any 
object so barren that it is not of some interest when one 
has once got into it. The difficulty is to get oneself well 
started. You have often had the experience of sitting down 
to a task with extreme reluctance and forcing yourself into 
it ; and yet, after you had thrown yourself faithfully into 
it for a little while, you have found it take on unexpected life 
and hold you in its grip for a long period. Latin and mathe- 
matics may be hard to get into, but when you are once 
launched into them an hour often passes before you realize 
it, so absorbed have you become in their study. Thus at- 
tention does not only follow interest but also creates it. 

Hence, if you would give effective attention, you must 
get into the spirit of your subject. This is as much a matter 
of your own cooperation as of the subject's nature. If 
you really try, you can find an interest in anything to which it 
is necessary to give attention. You must seek to under- 
stand it, stop and turn it over in your mind, ask yourself 
questions about it, take notes on it, and in every other way 
seek to find in it that which makes it worth while. In nearly 
every case you will find it taking on vitality and interest, 
and sometimes a supreme interest. Indeed if 3^ou do not 
find the subject taking on interest and gripping you, it is 
probably because of your own poverty of intellect. You 
are not finding what is really there. A blank intellect will 
find any subject blank. So do not be too ready to accuse a 
book or a lecture of lack of intrinsic interest, lest the accusa- 
tion react against yourself. A mind better equipped than 
your own would probably find it throbbing with vitality 
and with interest. 



Attention 245 

Need remains for voluntary. — But, important as it is 
that the spontaneous attention should take over the work 
of the voluntary after the first few moments, the voluntary 
can never be entirely eliminated. It will still be necessary 
to bring you to certain subjects and get you started into 
them. Moreover, many times attention will wander from 
your topic and will need to be recalled to it. This again is 
the work of the will. So whoever would become master 
of his mind, must form the habit of giving voluntary at- 
tention to those subjects which require it. The ability to 
do this is the distinguishing mark of the man of large achieve- 
ments. Such man, as well as the rest of us, is often tempted 
to dillydally. But he has long been denying this lazy tend- 
ency until it has learned its lesson, and is frightened away 
at the first show of teeth. He has become accustomed to 
commanding his powers and settling down to work without 
giving a hearing to the temptation not to do so. If you are 
to amount to much, you must make your mind your own. 
You must direct it where you would go, instead of pas- 
sively allowing it to lead you in a butterfly chase to no place 
in particular. When a task is yours for the hour, attend to 
it. If attention tends to wander from the topic into other 
fields, — and even important fields, — call it back. There 
will be other days for tracing out these tangent paths, if 
they are worth tracing, but to-day your task lies nearer at 
hand. If you allow yourself to be deflected from your 
topic by a related suggestion, and then perhaps deflected 
from that to another, and so on, you will get nowhere. 
To-day your task is to listen to this lecture, or to study this 
lesson, or to solve this problem, and it is to this task that 
you should devote yourself. One thing at a time is just 
as good maxim for the work of attention as it is in any 
other field. 

Cure for mind wandering. — Halleck gives the following 
remedy for mind wandering : 



246 Human Conduct 

A sure cure for mind wandering is to make an abstract from 
memory of sermons, speeches, or books. If one is reading a work 
on history, let him, after finishing a page, close the book and repeat 
to himself the substance of that page. If he can not do so with 
one reading, let him reread until he can. It does not show good 
generalship to march into a hostile country, leaving forts and armies 
unconquered in the rear. After finishing a chapter, let him repeat 
to himself, or to some friend, the substance of that chapter. At 
the end of the book, let him repeat the main facts in the entire work. 
The mind may wander at first, and scarcely anything may be re- 
tained from one reading ; but as soon as the mind feels that it will 
be surely called upon to reproduce what has been read, its energy 
wall be doubled. It will soon cease the lazy habit of merely allow- 
ing impressions to come in to meet it ; it will reach out to meet the 
impressions. 

The writer knows of a case of mind wandering cured by the 
oral recital and the making of a written abstract of the substance 
of three books, — an English history, John Stuart Mill's *' Political 
Economy," and a textbook on psychology. The chapters Avere in 
every case reread until a full abstract of each could be written 
down from memory. 

Fundamental likeness of the three forms of attention. — 
We have recognized three forms of attention — involuntary, 
non-voluntary, and voluntary. We must now admit that 
the difference is not fundamentally so great as may have 
been implied. In fact, they are at basis one — non-voluntary. 
They all follow interest ; only in two cases the interest is 
somewhat more remote than in the third. 

It is quite evident that the non-voluntary follows inter- 
est. Here the self feels a need — questions to be answered, 
curiosity to be satisfied — and reaches out for what will fill 
that need. But in involuntary attention that same thing 
is really true. Only here the needs that push themselves 
suddenly to the fore are deep biological ones. Through 
instinct the self is put on its guard against anything that may 
destroy it. Consequently when any situation that may in- 
volve danger presents itself there surges up from the depth 
of the self the question, '^ Is there not danger here? '^ and 



Attention 247 

attention obeys its regular law in swinging into line with 
this major interest of the self until its question has been 
answered. So involuntary attention also represents a move- 
ment from within after that which will satisfy the self as much 
as does the non-voluntary, only the sense of need is here 
taken care of on a different level, namely, that of instinct 
rather than of consciousness. Objects do not really thrust 
themselves upon involuntary attention from without, as 
they seem to do. 

Nor is the case different with the voluntary. Here also 
the self feels a need and directs the mental processes toward 
the fulfilling of that need. Only here the valued end to be 
realized is more remote. But the mind goes out in pursuit 
of satisfaction of its own hunger in all three cases. ^ As we 
saw in our study of apperception, so here we see again, there 
is no such thing as the outside world thrusting itself upon 
us. We ourselves must reach out for it. We shall soon 
have occasion to apply this fact in answering the very im- 
portant question whether one's life is determined by his 
environment or by his own choice. (See Chapter XVIII, 
on Character and Will.) 

Range of attention. — How many things can be attended 
to at the same time? Many persons can carry on a conver- 
sation while they play the piano, or while they typewrite, 
and Caesar is said to have been able to dictate four letters 
while he wrote a fifth. Are these persons attending to 
several objects at once? Space permits us to answer here 
only dogmatically, no.^ Thej^ are doing several things, 
but only because all but one of them is being carried out 
on the habit level. Several things can be done at once, 
but only one thought of, though this one thing may be com- 
plex — may consist of related elements reacted upon as a 

1 See Angell's Psychology, pages 88-92. 

2 For a fuller development of this see either Angell's Psychology y pages 
96-98 ; or William James' Psychology, Briefer Course, pages 219-220. 



248 Human Conduct 

unit. Where several disconnected acts, which are not 
purely automatic, go on together, it is only because atten- 
tion oscillates rapidly between them, each time planning 
the following steps for some distance ahead, and charging 
the physical organism with their execution, before it passes 
on to the next. Thus the piano player is sometimes, for 
short intervals, withdrawing her attention from her con- 
versation and centering it upon her playing, but her nerve 
centers have been so charged in advance that they can carry 
to completion automatically the sentences which she had 
already consciously planned, and something like the same 
thing is true in every case of divided attention. 

Effect of dividing attention. — To attempt, therefore, to 
attend to several things at once will inevitably weaken the 
attention given to each. Yet we often undertake to do this 
and do not recognize the resultant waste. Pupils learning 
to typewrite are tempted to engage in conversation with 
other pupils in the room, believing that this does not interfere 
with their typewriting. It does interfere. Experiments 
have shown clearly the necessity of keen attention to what 
one is doing if one would make maximum progress in the 
formation of any habit, and conversation, or any other oc- 
casion for divided attention, inevitably retards this prog- 
ress. Women, even school teachers at institutes, not in- 
frequently take their crocheting to lectures, claiming that 
they can follow the lecture just as well while crocheting as 
otherwise. They are deceiving themselves. They can not 
do so. Of course they can keep a running sense of what is 
being said, but they can not possibly grasp the message as 
fully as if they centered attention wholly upon it. One 
thing at a time, and it done vigorously, is a good motto here 
as elsewhere. 



Attention 249 



EXERCISES 

1. By means of other examples than those of the text, show that 
any element at the focus of consciousness is linked up with a fringe 
of others. 

2. Is it true that consciousness is always in motion? 

3. Consciousness has been compared to a sheet, a stream, a 
field, and a pool. Which is the best analogy, and why? 

4. Is it true that inattention is only attention to the wrong 
things? Give examples. 

5. What are the respective advantages and disadvantages of 
a long period of moderate attention and a short period of strenuous 
attention ? 

6. To what extent do you find that noises, or unaccustomed 
surroundings, interfere with your work? What remedy do you 
propose ? 

7. What is the relation of genius to attention? (See James' 
" Psychology," pages 227-228.) 

8. Under what conditions does a book or a lecture put you to 
sleep ? 

9. When we say that the topic must develop do we mean 
develop for us as hearers, for the speaker, or for some impartial 
spectator? Could it develop for one or both of the latter without 
doing so for the first? 

10. Can a speaker obey the injunction to adapt his pace to 
that of his auditors? By what signs can he know whether or not 
they are keeping with him? 

11. Is the author's advice regarding voluntary attention prac- 
tical ? 

12. Is mind wandering ever justifiable? What is its relation 
to mental recreation? 

13. Do you believe that one can talk while working without 
interfering with one's work? 



CHAPTER XVII 
THE MAKING AND BREAKING OF HABITS 

One day through the primeval wood 

A calf walked home as good calves should ; 

But made a trail all bent askew, 

A crooked trail as all calves do. 

Since then three hundred years have fled, 

And I infer the calf is dead. 

But still he left behind his trail, 

And thereby hangs my moral tale. 

The trail was taken up next day 

By a lone dog that passed that way ; 

And then a wise bell-wether sheep 

Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep. 

And drew the flock behind him, too. 

As good bell-wethers always do. 

And from that day, o'er hill and glade, 

Through those old woods a path was made. 

And many men wound in and out. 

And dodged and turned and bent about. 

And uttered words of righteous wrath 

Because 'twas such a crooked path; 

But still they followed — do not laugh — 

The first migrations of that calf. 

And through this winding woodway stalked 

Because he wobbled when he walked. 

The writer proceeds to tell us that the path became a 
lane, and that the lane became a road, where many a poor 
horse toiled on with his load beneath the burning sun and 
traveled some three miles in one. 

250 



Making and Breaking Habits 251 

And men two centuries and a half 
Trod in the footsteps of that calf. 

Hf 4: * * * * * 

For men are prone to go it blind 
Along the calf-paths of the mind, 
And work away from sun to sun, 
To do what other men have done. 

In a passage often quoted M. Leon Dumont says : 

Every one knows how a garment, having been worn a certain 
time, clings to the shape of the body better than when it was new ; 
there has been a change in the tissue, and this change is a new habit 
of cohesion ; a lock works better after having been used some time ; 
at the outset more force was required to overcome certain rough- 
ness in the mechanism. The overcoming of their resistance is a 
phenomenon of habituation. It costs less trouble to fold a paper 
when it has been folded already. This saving of trouble is due to 
the essential nature of habit, which brings it about that, to repro- 
duce the effect, a less amount of outward cause is required. The 
sounds of a violin improve by use in the hands of an able artist, 
because the fibers of the wood at last contract habits of vibration 
conformed to harmonic relations. This is what gives such in- 
estimable value to instruments that have belonged to great masters. 
Water, in flowing, hollows out for itself a channel, which grows 
broader and deeper; and, after having ceased to flow, it resumes 
when it flows again the path traced for itself before. 

Now it is this same principle that, when apphed to man, 
gives us habit. Harden remarks : 

Had the angels been consulted whether to create man with this 
principle introduced, that if a man did a thing once, it would be 
easier the second time, and at length would be done without effort, 
they would have said " Create.'* 

Now whether or not the angels were called upon for such 
advice it is upon that plan that man was created. As 
Paxton Hood says : 

It is a beautiful provision in the mental and moral arrangement 
of our nature that that which is performed as a duty may, by fre- 
quent repetition, become a habit ; and the habit of stern virtue, so 
repulsive to others, may hang around our neck like a wreath of 
flowers. 



252 Human Conduct 

Habit has physical basis. — And the basis of habit is 
identical with the basis of the uniformities quoted above — 
the material law, namely, that a substance cast once or more 
into a certain shape will tend either to retain, or to return 
again to, that shape. Only in the case of habit, properly 
so called, the substance involved is the nervous system and 
the particular effect retained is the pathways made through 
this by nerve currents. 

Learning to play the piano. — An illustration will make 
this clear. When one first undertakes to play the piano 
there is required a specific conscious adjustment. One 
first hunts out a correct key, places his finger upon it, and 
presses it down. Then he hunts the next and does likewise, 
and so on, every time giving attention to each single adjust- 
ment. But by no means so later. Sir James Paget tells 
us that : 

A practiced musician can play on the piano at the rate of twenty- 
four notes a second. For each note a nerve current must be trans- 
mitted from the brain to the fingers, and from the fingers to the 
brain. Each note requires three movements of the finger, the bend- 
ing down and raising up, and at least one lateral making no less 
than seventy-two motions in a second, each requiring a distinct 
effort of the will, and directed unerringly with a certain speed, and 
a certain force, to a certain place. 

Now what has happened between the awkward start and 
the masterful ending is this : at first the motor impulse had 
to be sent from the brain to the fingers through new and 
uncertain pathways. And so attention had to be given to 
the passage of each separate impulse, which even then could 
not execute its function without considerable diffusion and 
losing of its way. But after the same note had been found 
and pressed several times a clearcut pathway had been 
formed between the brain and the muscles involved in this 
act, over which the currents could pass readily and without 
wavering. Attention, too, could be largely withdrawn from 



Making and Breaking Habits 253 

the details of the adjustment and given to larger relation- 
ships. The same process had been going on with the find- 
ing and pressing of he other notes, so that the practice had 
reached such stage that it was only necessary to think each 
note, and the impulse was able to run down its ready-made 
channel and almost automatically play its part. 

Then came another stage in development. These single 
note pathways came to be connected into a system, so that 
one could think together the notes of a whole measure, and 
have this idea distribute its motor currents into the right 
neural pathways to play the series of notes. And at length 
the system of pathways has become so interconnected and 
perfected that one can let one's eye merely run along the 
bars, until he catches in feeling the meaning of the whole 
piece, and these incoming stimuli of themselves rattle out 
through their appropriate channels and set the necessary 
muscles into operation to execute the music correctly. 

Other illustrations. — Similarly, in the habit of saluting a 
friend, the sensations which one interprets as from the 
presence of a friend run into the brain and are, by previously 
formed pathways, switched right into the motor nerve 
channels leading out into the muscles of the arm, and in 
response the arm goes up. Every time that particular 
combination of stimuli flows into the brain it is, through an 
open switch, at once directed out into its customary channel, 
and the proper response results In an established habit 
very little consciousness attends the process. One is, of 
course, more or less aware of what is going on, but as onlooker 
rather than director. Indeed one is usually cognizant of 
the act only after it has occurred and, if he for once attempts 
to check it, often finds himself in the embarrassing position 
of doing so when it has been already half completed. Once 
formed the pathway permits the nerve current to run almost 
automatically through it, conscious control of the process 
sinking to a lower and lower level as the pathway is made 



254 Human Conduct 

deeper until, in such well-learned habits as that of walking, 
it has all but disappeared. 

Every habit is due to just this sort of physical mechanism. 
'^ An acquired habit, from the physiological point of view, 
is nothing but a new pathway of discharge formed in the 
brain, by which certain incoming currents ever after tend to 
escape. ^^ This, you see, is identical with the physical basis 
of memory. In fact memory and association may appro- 
priately be considered special forms of habit. In consequence 
all the laws which were laid down in our study of memory 
may be brought over and applied to habit in general. 

Relentlessness of habit. — This fact that habit has a 
physical basis is one of the utmost practical consequence. 
Because of it habit is governed by that inexorable physical 
law which shows toward mortals neither fear nor favor. 
Says Betts : 

So delicate is the organization of the brain structure and so 
unstable its molecules, that even the perfume of the flower, which 
assails the nose of a child, the song of a bird, which strikes his ear, 
or the fleeting dream, which lingers but for a second in his sleep, 
has so modified his brain that it wall never again be as if those things 
had not been experienced. Every sensory current which runs in 
from the outside world ; every motor current which runs out to 
command a muscle ; every thought which we think, has so modified 
the nerve structure through which it acts, that a tendency remains 
for a like act to be repeated. Our brain and nervous system is 
daily being molded into fixed habits of acting by our thoughts and 
deeds, and thus becomes the automatic register of all we do. 

The old Chinese fairy story hits upon a fundamental and vital 
truth. These celestials tell their children that each child is accom- 
panied by day and by night, every moment of his life, by an in- 
visible fairy, who is provided with a pencil and tablet. It is the 
duty of this fairy to put down every deed of the child both good 
and evil, in an indelible record which will one day rise as a witness 
against him. So it is in very truth with our brains. The wrong 
act may have been performed in secret, no living being may ever 
know that we performed it, and a merciful Providence may forgive 
it ; but the inexorable monitor of our deeds was all the time beside 



Making and Breaking Habits 255 

us writing the record, and the history of that act is inscribed for- 
ever in the tissues of our brain. It may be repented of bitterly 
in sackcloth and ashes and be discontinued, but its effects can 
never be quite effaced ; they will remain with us as a handicap 
till our dying day, and in some critical moment in a great emergence 
we shall be in danger of defeat from the effects of that long past 
and forgotten act. t 

Entraps by degrees. — The unlimited optimism of young 
people almost invariably blinds them to the inexorableness 
of the laws of habit. They have been so accustomed to 
being treated with indulgence by those who govern them 
that they fondly expect nature, too, to be ^^ reasonable.^' 
Like Rip Van Winkle, in taking one by one the drinks which 
he had resolved to quit, they say, '^ We won't count this 
time.'' But the nervous system counts it. No current 
can ever pass through it without leaving behind its effects, 
whether one wishes an effect to be left or not. I used to be 
told that Satan never captures a person by one bold attack 
but, each time he can get him to do a bad act, winds one 
more round of his cord about him until at last he has him 
bound securely fast. Certainly it is in this way that bad 
habits act. It is not suddenly and with a flare of trumpets 
that they capture one, but silently, little by little, as the 
fabled camel that begged shelter only for his nose in his 
master's tent, but, when he had secured this, gradually worked 
himself further in until he ended by kicking the owner out. 

Let no one deceive himself about his ability to practice 
undesirable acts and yet escape their clutches. Professor 
Phelps told of some Andover. students who, for sport, inter- 
changed the initial consonants of adjacent words. ^' But," 
said he, ^^ retribution overtook them. On a certain morning 
when one of them was leading the devotions, he prayed the 
Lord to ' have mercy on us, feak and weeble sinners.' " Says 
Dryden : 

Bad habits gather by unseen degrees, 
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. 



256 Human Conduct 

J. B. Gough portra;ydng in a vivid figure this gradual 
tightening of the grip of habit, writes : 

Now launch your bark, on that Niagara River : it is bright, 
smooth, beautiful, and glassy. There is a ripple at the bow ; the 
silvery wake you leave behind adds to your enjoyment. Down the 
stream you glide, oars, sails, and helm in proper trim, and you set 
out on your pleasure excursion. 

Suddenly some one cries out from the bank, ''Young men, ahoy ! '* 
"What is it?" "The Rapids are below you." "Ha, ha! we 
have heard of the Rapids, but we are not such fools as to get 
there. If we go too fast then we shall up with the helm and steer 
to the shore ; we shall set the mast in the socket, hoist the sail, 
and speed to land. Haste away ! " 

''Young man, ahoy, there ! " " What is it? " " The Rapids are 
below — the Rapids ! " " Ha, ha, never fear ! Time enough to 
steer out of danger when we are sailing swiftly with the current. 
On! on!'' 

"Young men, ahoy ! " " What is it ? " " Beware, beware ! The 
Rapids are below you ! " Now, you see the water foaming all 
around. See how fast you pass that point ! Up with the helm ! 
Now turn ! Pull hard ! quick, quick ! — pull for your lives — 
pull till the blood starts from the nostrils, and the veins stand like 
whipcord on the brow ! Set the mast in the socket ! — hoist the 
sail ! Ah, ah ! — it is too late ! Shrieking hopelessly over you go. 

Thousands go over '* rapids" every year, heedless of the still, 
small, warning voice. 

Progress also hy degrees. — But the converse of all this is, 
happily, also true. To quote Professor James : 

As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate 
drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and 
experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate 
acts and hours of work. Let no youth have any anxiety about the 
upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep 
faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave 
the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on 
waking up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent 
ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled 
out. Silently, between all the details of his business, the power 
of judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up within 
him as a possession that will never pass away. Young people 



Making and Breaking Habits 257 

should know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it has 
probably engendered more discouragement and faintheartedness 
in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put 
together. 

Value of habit. — And the blessings of habit are vastly 
greater than its drawbacks. It reduces to the automatic 
level nine tenths or more of the details of our conduct, and 
leaves us free to turn our minds to larger and newer problems. 
Dr. Maudley says : 

If an act became no easier after being done several times, if 
the careful direction of consciousness were necessary to its ac- 
complishment on each occasion, it is evident that the whole activity 
of a lifetime might be confined to one or two deeds — that no prog- 
ress could take place in development. A man might be occupied 
all day in dressing and undressing himself ; the attitude of his body 
would absorb all his attention and energy ; the washing of his hands 
or the fastening of a button would be as difficult to him on each 
occasion as to the child on its first trial ; and he would, furthermore, 
be completely exhausted by his exertions. Think of the pains 
necessary to teach a child to stand, of the many efforts which it 
must make, and of the ease with which it at last stands, unconscious 
of any effort. For while secondarily automatic acts are accom- 
plished with comparatively little weariness — in this regard approach- 
ing the organic movements, or the original reflex movements — 
the conscious effort of the will soon produces exhaustion. A spinal 
cord without . . . memory would be simply an idiotic spinal cord. 
... It is impossible for an individual to reaHze how much he owes 
to its automatic agency until disease has impaired its functions. 

On this same subject Professor James, in his ^^ Talks to 
Teachers/' remarks : 

The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to 
the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers 
of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no 
more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual 
but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drink- 
ing of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, 
and the beginning of every bit of work are subjects of express 
volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to 
s 



258 Human Conduct 

the deciding or regretting of matters which ought to be so ingrained 
in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If 
there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my 
hearers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right. 

We should then ^^ make our nervous system our ally 
rather than our enemy. '^ We must form habits ; the only 
question can be^ What habits? And by observing the 
laws of habit formation, and letting our intelligence cooperate 
in the process, we can build out of our natures marvelously 
effective machines. Nor do we use the term ^^ machine ^^ 
here disparagingly, for not only our industrial work, but 
also our social effectiveness, our intellectual activities, our 
moral conduct, and even our religious devotions can be made 
effective only by containing a very large and important 
portion of habit elements. Indeed in the building of a life 
there is no more significant phase than that of intelligent 
and effective habit formation. 

Requirements in habit formation. — But good habits do 
not form themselves. They must be fought for. To build a 
life is an uphill game, and requires that one be eternally on 
the job. Two things effective habit formation demands : 
the first is repetition ; the second, the focusing of attention 
upon the end to be attained while the repetition is going on. 
We shall consider them in turn. 

Repetition. Whoever expects to attain to mastery in a day, 
where habit factors are involved, will be soon undeceived. 
In '^Daniel Deronda" George Eliot has Klesmer counsel in 
this way Gwendolen, the butterfly of society, who thinks that, 
with a little polishing, she can be rounded out into a musician : 

Any great achievement in acting or in music grows with the 
growth. Whenever an artist has been able to say '* I came, I saw, 
I conquered," it has been at the end of patient practice. Genius 
at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline. 
Singing and acting, like the fine dexterity of the juggler with his 
cup and balls, require a shaping of the organs toward a finer and 
finer certainty of effect. Your musQles, your whole frame must 



Making and Breaking Habits 259 

go like a watch — true, true, true to a hair. This is the work of 
the springtime of life before the habits have been formed. 

And the same thing that is true of music and acting is 
true in every other field. ^^ Practice makes perfect '^ and 
it alone. The ball pitcher may know the theory of his art, 
but still he can attain to mastery only by pitching one ball 
after another until his arm has come to work as a precise 
and delicate machine. The star drop-kicker who, amid the 
wild applause of his supporters, kicks, at the critical time, 
the goal that wins the game, does so only because day after 
day he has been practicing this one thing until the nerves 
and muscles of his leg have become adjusted, with infinite 
nicety, for the distribution and utilization of the energy 
sent to them. He needs only to re:olve to kick the ball and 
the gradually perfected mechanism of his body carries out 
the resolution. And so it is with the driving of nails, the 
sewing of garments, the sending of telegraphic messages. 
These things are awkward at first, but with practice come at 
length, as definite, clear-cut pathways are ground out for 
the neural impulses which condition them, almost to run 
themselves off. So it is, too, with the more intellectual habits 
— using good Enghsh, thinking logically, considering for 
oneself rather than relying upon authority. So it is, too, 
even with the moral and religious habits — the habits of 
persistence, of honesty, of obeying the voice of conscience, 
of being reverent, and a hundred others. These can sit 
naturally and easily upon us only after long continued and 
uninterrupted practice. They can not come by being worked 
on Sundays and allowed to rust the remainder of the week. 

In our chapter on Memory we saw that it is uneconomical 
to learn a set of facts and then, by lack of review, permit 
oneself to forget them. This is, we there said, like ceasing 
the battle just when the enemy is turning to flee from the 
field. A similar thing is true in habit formation. Many 
people enthusiastically begin a bit of training, and then leave 



26o Human Conduct 

off before they have clinched their results. They practically 
form the habit and then, with a premature feeling that they 
have won their point, allow it to lapse through cessation of 
attention and practice. They stop at what Professor Bagley 
calls "' the half-way house/ ^ and lose, in consequence, all 
the energy that they have put into the training. When 
one has carried achievement so far that he is within sight of 
his goal, it is surely uneconomical not to add the little 
extra energy necessary to clinch it. Indeed, there is no 
greater moral danger than this premature confidence of 
victory, with the slacking of guard which goes with it. It 
is through these weakened defenses in what are naturally 
strong entrenchments that the wily enemy, still lurking in 
the neighborhood, steals into the city and captures it. 

Focalization. — But for habit formation the second element 
— focalized attention — is equally important. After a habit 
has once been formed it can be maintained by repetition 
alone without attention — and indeed it is in this very 
possibility that the economy of habit lies. But while the 
habit is in the making the case is ver}^ different. Suppose, 
for example, that you are learning to write, and that your 
specific task is the making of the letter M. First 3^ou look 
at your model. Then with a guiding idea of what your 
motion is to be, you proceed to execute it. In part you 
succeed, and these successes affect you so pleasurably that 
you fasten on to them. But in part you fail. You have, 
say, got the three curves in, but you do not have them high 
enough. Again you try, this time preserving the three 
peaks but aiming to make them higher. After a few trials 
they are correct in this respect, but still too broad. Then 
you give your attention to the breadth until that is corrected. 
And so, for the purpose of our illustration, we may conceive 
your going on correcting one imperfection after another 
until you have reached a motor adjustment perfectly match- 
ing your idea. Your process here demands, of course, 



Making and Breaking Habits 261 

repeated trials — practice, repetition — but it also demands 
persistent attention. As long as you fasten each time on 
some specific aspect which you attempt to correct so long 
you make progress ; as soon as you let this attention lag 
you do not improve, no matter how many times you repeat. 
Indeed, while a habit is being formed, repetition without 
attention is likely to be harmful rather than helpful, because 
it tends to fix the response at an imperfect stage. When, 
however, the response has reached a satisfactory stage of 
perfection it is then time to grind the pathways which 
physiologically condition it so deeply into the nervous 
system, by practice in just that form, that the neural im- 
pulse can follow them without let or hindrance, and with 
little possibility of breaking over into some other channel, 
just as the carpenter, when he has his timbers at last 
properly set, hastens to securely nail them fast.^ 

Do you wish to improve your carriage, or 3^our language, 
or your gestures, or other personal mannerisms? Then 
practice what you would be under the stress of active atten- 
tion. Is your baseball batting, your basketball goal throw- 
ing, or your football tackling still defective? Do not hope 
to improve them by practice unless, on each repetition, you 
have in mind some definite defect which you wish to eliminate. 
Does your penmanship, or your literary style, or your manner 
of debating need improvement? Then in every detail of 
your repetition of these acts strive after some specific result 
which you foresee would correct the particular defect. With- 
out your practice being attended by such strenuous attention, 
directed toward specific ends, you can accomplish little or 
nothing by way of improvement. 

Habits out of instincts. — Eternal vigilance is, then, the 
price of victory. A well-formed habit can be drilled into 

1 Hence a teacher, in training the child in such habit as writing, for ex- 
ample, should point out specific improvements to be made, not commend 
or condemn in general. 



262 Human Conduct 

the system only as the result of persistent effort. It must, 
however, be admitted that habits are much more easily 
established at certain periods of life than at others. There 
are times when one^s nature is ripe for a particular habit, 
and then it is easily formed ; there are other times when it is 
not ripe, and at such times the task is extremely difficult. 
In fact, it is nature that provides the stuff out of which we 
build our habits, and this stuff is, to a large extent, our in- 
stincts. You already know, from our chapter on ^^ Keeping 
Open-minded Toward Progress," what our instincts are. 
They are certain tendencies toward specific adjustments 
which we inherit ready-made from our ancestors — as the 
tendency to walk, to eat, to love, to get angry, to strike our 
opponent, etc. Now it is these instincts that furnish the 
original impulses which, when allowed to function, start 
us on our habits. Take, for example, the habit of walking 
erect. Instinct has given us a certain pride which ex- 
presses itself in the assuming of an erect, expansive posture. 
Upon this prompting of nature we may then seize — because 
such posture is reassuring and therefore pleasurable to us, 
because we see that it gives us prestige, or because someone 
has praised us for it — and volitionally reenforce it. Thus 
by putting into play and in this way deepening the pathways 
that nature herself gave us as a heritage — for instinct is 
due to pathways that have been inherited rather than newly 
made — we may be very readily able to form the habit of 
walking erect. Just so also with such a habit as that of 
saving. Instinct prompts us to accumulate property — to 
get and keep as much as we can. And this instinct we may 
seize upon and develop into a habit of saving. Indeed 
there is perhaps no habit that does not thus have, as its 
starting point, instinct elements, though it may, of course, 
have other elements as well. 

Transitoriness of instincts. — But an extremely important 
fact for the pedagogy of habit formation is that these instincts 



Making and Breaking Habits 263 

are transitory.^ They ripen and then, if unused/ decay. If, 
on the contrary, they are allowed to express themselves when 
they come to their tide, they remain as habits. Mr. Spaulding 
experimented with young chicks and found that they had 
uppermost, during the first few days, the instinct of 
sociability, and would follow — and continue long after- 
wards to follow — any moving object that was most promi- 
nent in their environment, which nature had, of course, 
intended to be the hen. But when the chicks were kept 
hooded during the first few days, so that this instinct of 
sociability had no opportunity to function, it passed away, 
and when unhooded later the chicks manifested the greatest 
fright at moving objects, instead of attraction to them. 
The instinct, then, w^as easily fixed in the form of a habit if 
allowed to express itself when it was ripe : but if not allowed 
to do so, very soon passed away. Calves born in domestica- 
tion are very tame ; but it is said that, if they are born out 
in the mountains and not discovered for some days, they 
are wild as deer. That is because by this time the earlier 
instinct has, because unused, decayed, and the instinct of fear 
has ripened. 

Nor is this true only of the earliest days of life nor only 
of the lower animals. It is a general law that instincts tend 
to assert themselves most strongly — or even at all — only 
at certain periods of ph^^sical development. And if they 
are to be used as the starting point in habit formation 
it is clear that they must be used at the opportune 
moment. Here Shakespeare^s often quoted statement is 
eminently true : 

There is a tide in the affairs of men 
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune ; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. 

1 Psychologists are lately emphasizing the transitoriness of instincts less 
than formerly. 



264 Human Conduct 

Form habits at critical time. — Professor James has put this 
fact, and its practical application, most forcefully : 

Leaving lower animals aside, and turning to human instincts, 
we see the law of transiency corroborated on the widest scale by 
the alternation of different interests and passions as human life 
goes on. With the child life is all play and fairy tales and learning 
the external properties of ** things"; with the youth it is bodily 
exercises of a more systematic sort, novels of the real world, boon- 
fellowship and song, friendship and love, nature, travel, and ad- 
venture, science and philosophy ; with the man ambition and 
policy, acquisitiveness, responsibility to others, and the selfish 
zest of the battle of life. If a boy grows up alone at the age of 
games and sports and learns neither to play ball, nor row, nor sail, 
nor ride, nor skate, nor fish, nor shoot, probably he will be sedentary 
to the end of his days ; and, though the best of opportunities be 
afforded him for learning these things later, it is a hundred to one 
but that he will pass them by and shrink back from the effort of 
taking those necessary first steps the prospect of which, at an earlier 
age, would have filled him with eager delight. The sexual passion 
expires after a protracted reign ; but it is well known that its pe- 
culiar manifestations in a given individual depend almost entirely 
on the habits he may form during the early period of its activity. 
Exposure to bad company then makes him a loose liver all his days ; 
chastity kept at first makes the same easy later on. In all pedagogy 
the great thing is to strike the iron while hot, and to seize the wave 
of the pupil's interest in each successive subject before its ebb has 
come, so that knowledge may be got and a habit of skill acquired — 
a headway of interest, in short, secured, on which afterwards the 
individual may fioat. There is a happy moment for fixing skill 
in drawing, for making boys collectors in natural histor3^ and 
presently dissectors and botanists ; then for initiating them into 
the harmonies of mechanics and the w^onders of physical and chemi- 
cal law. Later introspective psychology and metaphysical and 
religious mysteries take their turn ; and last of all the drama of 
human affairs and worldly wisdom in the widest sense of the term. 
In each of us a saturation point is soon reached in all these things ; 
the impetus of our purely intellectual zeal expires, and unless the 
topic be one associated with some urgent personal need that keeps 
our wits constantly whetted about it, we settle into an equilibrium, 
and live on what we learned when our interests were fresh and in- 
stinctive, without adding to the store. Outside of their own 



Making and Breaking Habits 265 

business the ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are 
practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives. They 
cannot get anything new. Disinterested curiosity is passed, the men- 
tal grooves and channels set, the power of assimilation gone. . . . 
To detect the moment of instinctive readiness for the subject is, 
then, the first duty of every educator. As for the pupils, it would 
probably lead to a more earnest temper on the part of college 
students if they had less belief in their unlimited future intellectual 
potentialities, and could be brought to realize that whatever 
Physics, and Pohtical Economy, and Philosophy they are now ac- 
quiring are for better or worse, the Physics, and Political Economy, 
and Philosophy that will have to serve them to the end. 

The life of the great scientist, Charles Darwin, contains a 
sad story of failure to take account of this law of transitoriness 
of instincts. He says : 

Up to the age of thirtj^ or beyond it, poetry of many kinds gave 
me great pleasure ; and even as a schoolboy I took intense 
delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have 
also said that pictures formerly gave me considerable, and music 
very great, delight. But now, after many years, I can not endure 
to read a line of poetry. 

The eminent scientist had postponed cultivation of his 
aesthetic nature hoping to attend to it after his scientific 
work had been done, but found to his sorrow that the muses 
would not wait. Such story could be paralleled in many a life. 
One is half resolved to begin some important reform in his 
life — perhaps to affiliate himself with the church — but 
he says : ^^ Not now. Next year I will do it.'' But when 
next year combes it finds him cold. He may abstractly wish 
to take the step, but he lacks the warm impulses necessary 
to give substance to his wish. He has trifled away his 
opportunity. 

Repress instincts at critical time. — The converse side of this 
matter is also brought out in the quotation from James above. 
We have been showing that if you wish to utilize an instinct 
to build a habit, you should take it at its flood. On the other 



266 Human Conduct 

side, it is equally true that if you wish to prevent an instinct 
from fastening itself upon you as a habit, the battle which you 
wage against it need not be long. Sternly refuse to allow the 
instinct to express itself, and it will take the hint and leave 
you. You see now how very wrong is a certain school of 
psychologists who claim that one should ^' sow his wild 
oats '' and get them out of his system. When, they say, the 
instinct to fight, or to be cruel to animals, or to be defiant of 
authority, or to lie, or to be loose in morals, develops, let it 
have its way and be over with. Otherwise, they claim, it 
will fester within and break out abnormally later. But 
from what was said above it is clear that nature does not 
work that way. Instincts that are allowed to express 
themselves do not soon get enough of it and pass away. 
Instead they fasten themselves upon us as permanent 
habits. The more they get the more they want. On the 
other hand, if checked the}^ do not fester within and break 
out afterwards. Instead they pass permanently away or, at 
least, are permanently weakened by reason of the inhibition. 
If, then, you wish to establish yourself on the level of develop- 
ment which these instincts were worked out to serve — the 
animal or savage level — you may let them all, as they present 
themselves, have their fling ; but if you wish to fight your way 
to a higher level — the level of enlightened man — it is 
your business to eliminate from your life, by timely sup- 
pression, those tendencies not congruent with civilization. 
In Tom Brown at Oxford^ Hughes says : 

In all the wide range of accepted British maxims, there is none, 
take it for all in all, more thoroughly abominable than this one as 
to the sowing of wild oats. Look at it on what side you will, 
and you can make nothing but a devil's maxim of it. What a 
man — be he young, old, or middle-aged — sows, that, and 
nothing else, shall he reap. The one only thing to do with 
wild oats is to put them carefully into the hottest part of the 
fire, and get them burnt to dust, every seed of them. If you 
sow them, no matter in what ground, up they will come, with 



Making and Breaking Habits 267 

long, tough roots, like couch-grass, and luxuriant stalks and leaves, 
as sure as there is a sun in heaven — a crop which it turns one's 
heart cold to think of. The devil, whose special crop they are, 
will see that they thrive, and you, and nobody else, will have to 
reap them ; and no common reaping will get them out of the soil, 
which must be dug down deep again and again. Well for you if 
with all your care you can make the ground sweet again by your 
dying day. 

Good habits must be fought for. — I am now ready to 
answer a question which may have arisen a while ago in 
your minds. Are habits always built up with effort? 
Must we give attention in their formation? Are there not 
many habits into which we drift merely because we do not 
think? And the answer is that there are habits into which 
we drift, but they are those which represent a lower biological 
level. They are only instincts, which we share with the 
savages or even with, the lower animals, fixed as habits 
through their being permitted to function a sufficient number 
of times. They do not require the effort demanded for the 
breaking of new pathways, as do the kind of habits spoken 
of above, but rest in pathways implanted in our nervous 
systems at birth which only need a little cleaning out. 
These are such habits as slovenliness of dress and of speech, 
the use of narcotics, selfishness, laziness, and intellectual 
drifting. But these habits into which we can drift carry us 
down in the biological scale to the level of the brute. As 
Shakespeare says, ^^ To ebb hereditary sloth instructs me/' 
but up to the level of a man it is necessary for us to fight our 
way. 

James' maxims on habit formation. — James' famous 
chapter on Habit contains some practical maxims on habit 
formation, based on the work of Professor Bain, which have 
become classic. They are these : 

First ... we must take care to launch ourselves with as 
strong and decided an initiative as possible. Accumulate all the 
possible circumstances which shall reenforce the right motives; 



268 Human Conduct 

put yourself assiduously in a condition that encourages the new way ; 
make engagements incompatible with the old ; take a public 
pledge, if the case allows ; in short, envelop your resolution with 
every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a 
momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as 
soon as it otherwise might ; and every day during which a break- 
down is postponed adds to the chances of its not occiu'ring at all. 

The second maxim is : * Never suffer an exception to occur till 
the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like 
the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding 
up ; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind 
again. Continuity of training is the great means of making 'the 
nervous system act infallibly right. . . . 

The question of tapering off, in abandoning such habits as 
drink and opium indulgence comes in here, and is a question about 
which experts differ within certain limits, and in regard to what 
may be best for an individual case. In the main, however, all 
expert opinion would agree that abrupt acquisition of the new 
habit is the best way, if there be a real possibility of carrying it out. 
We must be careful not to give the will so stiff a task as to insure 
its defeat at the very outset ; but, provided one can stand it, a 
sharp period of suffering, and then a free time, is the best thing 
to aim at, whether in giving up a habit like that of opium, or in 
simply changing one's hours of rising or of work. It is surprising 
how soon a desire will die of inanition if it be never fed. . . . 

A third maxim may be added to the preceding pair : Seize 
the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you 
make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in 
the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the 
moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing 
motor effects, that resolves and aspirations communicate the new 
*'set" to the brain. 

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, 
and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one have not 
taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's char- 
acter may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere 
good intentions, hell is proverbially paved. And this is an obvious 
consequence of the principles we have laid down. A character, as 
J. S. Mill says, **is a completely fashioned will" ; and a will, in the 
sense in which he means it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in 
a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal emer- 
gencies of life. A tendency to act only becomes effectively in- 



Making and Breaking Habits 269 

grained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with 
which the actions actually occur, and the brain "grows" to their 
use. When a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to evaporate 
without bearing practical fruit it is worse than a chance lost ; it 
works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions 
from taking the normal path of discharge. . . . 

[Fourth] Keep the faculty of effort ahve in you by a little 
gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic 
or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two some- 
thing for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, 
so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not 
unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort 
is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. 
The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never 
bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it 
will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily 
inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic 
volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand 
like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer 
fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast. 



Breaking habits. — Focalization. — And the very same laws 
that apply to habit formation apply also to the breaking of 
undesirable habits. First you must focus attention upon 
the objectionable phase of your conduct. Without such 
attention your wish may be good enough, but your act will 
•not follow your wish. When you come to think of the 
matter you will find that you have been, without knowing 
it, practicing your old habit. And the only way to avoid 
thus drifting on, is to watch yourself attentively while 
breaking up the habit. 

No exception. — And then be doubly sure that you give 
the old enemy no chance to express itself, for, if you do, one 
such expression will open up again the old pathways. I 
lived once in a section of the country where the river fre- 
quently washed out the railroad bed. And I learned then 
that a series of washouts were- likely to come together. This 
was because the repairs of the first left the bed rather loose, 



270 Human Conduct 

and the slightest flood could wash it out again. But if the 
bed could withstand the strain until its elements had settled 
firmly together, it could then stand securely against the flood, 
and soon turn it into safer channels. And so it is in the break- 
ing up of a habit. At first the old pathways are but in- 
securely blocked and highly susceptible to a ^^ w^ashout.'' 
But the longer the old habit is inhibited the firmer becomes 
their resistance to the intrusion of the old currents. So in 
habit breaking, permit, especially in the early stages, no 
exception. 

Substitution, — And finally meet the problem by substitution 
rather than by direct onslaught. It is hard to maintain a 
vacuum. The empty mind is the deviFs workshop. As 
Professor Angell says : ^^ Give yourself surroundings which 
will offer the least possible temptation. Do not try to 
merely suppress the bad habit. If possible, put something 
else which is good in place of it. See to it that you are always 
occupied in some proper way until you feel sure that the grip 
of the bad habit is loosened.^' 

" How shall I a habit break? " 

As you did that habit make. 

As you gathered you must lose ; 

As you yielded, now refuse, 

Thread by thread the strands we twist 

Till they bind us, neck and wrist ; 

Thread by thread the patient hand 

Must untwine, ere free we stand. 

As we builded, stone by stone, 

We must toil, unhelped, alone, 

Till the wall is overthrown. 

But remember, as we try, 
Lighter every test goes by ; 
Wading in, the stream grows deep 
Toward the center's downward sweep; 
Backward turn, each step ashore 
Shallower is than that before. 



Making and Breaking Habits 271 

Ah, the precious years we waste 
Leveling what we raised in haste ; 
Doing what must be undone 
Ere content or love be won. 
First across the gulf we cast 
Kite-borne threads, till lines are passed, 
And habit builds the bridge at last ! 

— John Boyle O'Reilly. 

EXERCISES 

1. Just what is the similarity in physical structure between 
habit and the retention of traces of past states in plants or in- 
animate physical objects? 

2. How does the principle of economy through habit apply 
to a student's making and following a definite study schedule? 

3. Is it easier to hold yourself to moderation in such matters 
as whispering in the study hall, or to repress the tendency en- 
tirely? How is it with temptations to major social vices? Discuss 
the dangers of the pohcy of moderation. 

4. Make a list of some objectionable mannerisms which you 
have observed, and tell how they could be overcome. Have you 
examined your own conduct for objectionable mannerisms? 

5. Describe the process by which one learns to write on the 
typewriter, and the mechanism of the finished habit. 

6. Cite examples of the fact that one may slip into bad habits 
gradually and without realizing it. 

7. Rousseau says : "The only habit a child should be allowed 
to form is to contract no habits whatever." Is that good advice? 
Why? 

8. Give examples, from your observation, of half-formed habits 
which were lost because they were not practiced sufficiently long 
to finally clinch them. Is it true that the time put into forming 
them was wasted? Worse than wasted? 

9. Why is practice worth so much more if carried on under 
the stimulus of intense interest than if carried on indifferently? 
What is the effect of continuing to practice after you have become 
so tired, or so indifferent, that you make many errors? 

10. A certain Austrian, undertaking to break his habit of loaf- 
ing at a tempting wine-shop, advertised in the newspaper that he 
would pay fifty gulden to any one who found him in the wine-shop 
in question. To what psychological principle was he conforming? 



CHAPTER XVIII 

CHARACTER AND WILL 

/ Character grounded in habit. — ^^ Sow a thought and reap 
an act ; sow an act and reap a habit ; sow a habit and reap 
a character; sow a character and reap a destiny.'^ 

In our chapter on Suggestion we saw how surely an implanted 
thought will lead to an act. In the last chapter we found 
that an act repeated will form a habit. We have now to see 
that habit come to fruition i^ character. 

Character is often spoken of as if it were some mysterious 
entity that nature has bestowed upon her favored sons, or 
that has come in some unexplainable way in recognition of 
vague, general merit. It is not anything of the sort. There 
is nothing more definite in its make-up than character. It 
consists in ^^ an organized set of habits of reaction ^^ and only 
in this. A man^s character rests in his habit of prompt- 
ness, of industry, of keeping his word, of doing his work 
systematically, of making few resolutions but putting these 
into action ; in his habitual manner of thinking, of planning, 
and of executing; in his mode of walking and talking; in 
his practice of conforming or not conforming to social con- 
ventions. And these, clearly, are no sugar plums distrib- 
uted by the gods. They are all factors which have had to 
be built up and organized into a whole by long practice. 
How and why this is, our last chapter has clearly shown us. 
Habits must be developed through a continuous process, 
and so — since it consists of habits — must character. We 
can not wish ourselves to perfection, nor go there with seven- 
leagued boots, in the latter case any more than in the former. 

272 



Character and Will 273 

We must win our way to character. ^^ What we do upon 
some great occasion/' says H. P. Liddon, '' will probably 
depend upon what we are ; and what we are will be the re- 
sult of previous years of self discipline/' 

Character result of continuous growth. — One often 
expects that when he moves into a new town, or takes a 
new position, or enters college, or joins a church, he will 
be somahow a different person, and his old fears and weak- 
nesses and temptations will not follow him. But he soon 
finds out, to his chagrin, that character is not made nor 
unmade by crossing boundary lines. He may, under the 
artificial stimulus, be able to maintain a different front for a 
little while, but soon his old self will inevitably poke itself 
to the fore. There is no such thing as a sudden transition 
in character. Externally one may seem to change, but the 
change is only superficial. Psychologists have, of course, 
found that there are in most lives periods of sudden change 
of level in one's conscious attitude toward life — crises called 
conversion in religion, but occurring in Philosophy, in 
Science, in literary appreciation, and even in athletic ability 
as well — but these sudden conversions represent only a 
shaking of our external life into a new equilibrium upon 
that level to which our silent inner growth has long been 
carrying us. Or if these cataclysms lift us, as they some- 
times do, to a level for which our inner growth has not yet 
prepared us, we must build up around them afterwards 
their necessary substantial foundation before we are secure. 
What we become we must earn, either before or after ^^ con- 
version," and the external change is but our credentials 
testifying to our continuous inner growth. Many a sad 
relapse has come because men, ignorant of this fact, pre- 
maturely believed themselves to be saved when they were 
only embarking upon the pursuit of salvation. 

It is, then, only step by step that character is won. Says 
Josiah G. Holland, 



2 74 Human Conduct 

We rise by the things that are under our feet ; 

By what we have mastered of good and gain ; 

By pride deposed and the passion slain, 
And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet. 

Wings for the angels, but feet for men ! 

We may borrow the wings to find the way — 
We may hope, and resolve, and aspire, and pray ; 

But our feet must rise or we fall again. 

Only in dreams is a ladder thrown 

From the weary earth to the sapphire walls ; 
But the dreams depart, and the vision falls, 

And the sleeper wakes on his pillow of stone. 

Heaven is not reached by a single bound ; 
But we build the ladder by which we rise 
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 

And we mount to its summit round by round. 

Long preparation for responsibility. — On this, John Todd 

says : 

Patient labor and investigation are not only essential to success 
in study, but are an unfailing guarantee to success. The young 
man is in danger of feeling that he will strike out something new. 
His spirits are buoyant and his hopes sanguine. He knows not 
the mortified feeling of being repeatedly defeated by himself. He 
will burst upon the world at once, and strike the blows of a giant, 
while his arm is that of a child. He is not to toil up the hill and 
wait for years of self-discipline, close, patient study, and hard labor 
— not he ; but before you know it, he will be on the heights of 
the highest Alps, with a lofty feeling, looking down upon the 
creepers below. 

Thus multitudes waste life, and absolutely fritter away their ex- 
istence, in doing nothing except waiting for a golden opportunity 
to do something great and magnificent. Did not Patrick Henry 
burst upon the world at once, and at once exhibit the strength of 
a giant? If he did, he is no specimen of ordinary minds, and no 
man has a right to presume upon anything more than an intellect 
of ordinary dimensions as his own. What multitudes of men lie 
still, and never lift the pen, because the time is not come ! When 
they come out, it must be in a ** great book," a splendid address, 



Character and Will 275 

or some great effort. The tree must not be allowed to grow by 
inches ; no, at once the sapling must be loaded with the fruit of 
the tree of threescore years. Alas ! trees planted and watered 
by such expectations will never be more than dwarfs. Franklin 
rose high, and his name is engraved deep and fair on the roll of 
immortality ; but he began his greatness by making an almanac : 
he continued to make it for years, and rose, step by step, till he 
was acknowledged at the head of modern philosophers. 

Every young man ought to remember that he who would carry 
the ox must every day shoulder the calf. 

, Consistency of character. — Character, then, is a balance 
wheel in one's life. One's act at any given time is not the 
product of the moment's caprice, nor of accident. What 
he does is rather an expression of what he is. He is carried 
on in his conduct by some such previously gathered momen- 
tum as that which holds the flying stone in its course. In 
consequence you can predict his acts with almost as much 
certainty- as you can calculate in advance, from the laws 
exemplified in its flight and deduced from its already trav- 
ersed path, where the moving stone will be at a given instant. 
His reaction to specific classes of things he has long ago 
determined upon, so that now, when he meets them, he 
automatically disposes of them as soon as he recognizes their 
class. Over the taking of apples or the '^ swiping '' of 
pennants, for example, he hesitates only until he has classi- 
fied the act as stealing, and then forthwith takes such atti- 
tude toward it as his past has prepared him to take. 

About the well- developed character there are, indeed, 
few surprises. And where one with such character is found 
to do something unexpected his friends immediately con- 
clude that either they were not rightly acquainted with the 
circumstances or did not fully know him. And if second 
consideration shows the circumstances to be such as they 
had understood, they at once begin to look into his past for 
precedents for the strange bit of conduct, and prepare them- 
selves to recast their concept of his character in consequence. 



276 Human Conduct 

They are rightly sure that his deed is not an accident, but 
one that flowed from his character, and that might have 
been foreseen had that character been correctly known. 

And that is the more true because, while one's character 
is grounded in the sum of his habits, it is not made up of a 
mere aggregate of disconnected habits. These have been 
worked together into a more or less consistent unity. The 
teacher, for example, tends not to permit habits incongru- 
ent with his profession to function. When he is temipted 
to smoke or to loaf, or to use incorrect English, or to tell 
smutty stories, the recollection of his professional responsi- 
bilities comes to him and checks these acts. When, on the 
other hand, the dispositions favorable to his profession 
present themselves this same recollection reenforces them. 
Similarly the banker will inhibit these habits that indicate 
levity, absence of sound judgment, and lack of integrity, 
and will reenforce those which tend to establish public con- 
fidence in him. Thus in general one's plans and ideals 
hover over him and act as tutor to his habits. His whole 
character stands watch and demands the credentials of his 
separate habits as they present themselves, and admits to 
favor only those in harmony with that system until his life 
has come to be built up around that ideal which he has 
chosen for himself. Harden remarks : 

It is said that if you invite one of the devil's children to your 
home the whole family will follow. So one bad habit seems to 
have a relationship with all the others. For instance, the one 
habit of negligence, slothfulness, makes it easier to form others 
equally bad, until the entire character is honeycombed by the 
invasion of a family of bad habits. 

Of course the same thing is true of good habits. 

Differences in degree of unification of character. — But 
unfortunately this unification of character is unequally 
realized by different individuals. There are persons whose 
lives are so developed and balanced as to make them irre- 



Character and Will 277 

sistible moral forces wherever they are. There are others 
whose hves are so scattered and superficial as almost to justify 
us in saying what Pope once said of women — they '' have 
no characters at all/^ For one reason or another almost 
any idea which comes into their minds shoots out into action. 
The specific responses are not obliged to square themselves 
with the whole of the person^s character before being allowed 
to express themselves. That great American Psychologist, 
so often quoted in these pages, distinguishes, on this basis, 
three kinds of will. 

The explosive will. — The first is the Explosive Will. Here 
there is almost no inhibition. When an idea presents itself 
there is nothing to prevent its running right out into the 
act to which it points — for you remember from one of our 
earlier chapters that every idea naturally tends to shoot 
out into motor results, and will do so unless it is blocked by 
opposing ideas. But in this explosive type the motor effect 
follows so quickly, or perhaps the inhibiting ideas are so 
slow in coming, that the deed is performed before it can be 
stopped. The cutting words are spoken, the too liberal 
promise is made, the drink is taken, the unworthy offer is 
accepted, and then regretted afterwards when one has had 
time to think. Or if, at the time, one thinks at all, the counter 
side gets so unsympathetic a hearing that its claim seems 
weak in comparison. What this sort of person needs is such 
an ever-present sense of what he means to be as will, on these 
critical occasions, swing up before him and check the impulse 
until he can decide whether or not it is consistent with that 
ideal. 

The obstructed will. — The diametrically opposite kind 
is the Obstructed Will. Here one goes on deliberating 
upon a matter long after it should have been decided. Im- 
pulses and counter impulses see-saw up and down in his 
mind. Even when he seems to have reached a conclusion 
he finds it difficult to carry it into practice, for the moment 



278 Human Conduct 

he attempts to do so a vague feeling that he may regret his 
decision comes up and blocks his course. Such a person is 
too much ^^ sicklied over with the pale cast of thought ^^ 
to do anything vigorously. The principle that such person 
needs to recognize and act upon is that no decision is of 
itself a kind of decision — and nearly always a bad one — 
that a relatively poor decision is better than none, that 
after pros and cons have been balanced against each other 
for a reasonable period it is time for those on the apparently 
lighter side of the balance to be summarily and permanently 
dismissed. Every choice must necessarily involve some 
loss, and that fact might as well be recognized and the 
alternative that seems less valuable heroically banished from 
mind. Of course as soon as the one alternative is put away, 
the other, now unblocked, will issue into conduct. 

The normal will, — And between the two extremes stands 
the Normal Will. The person who possesses this has many 
situations already thought out and labeled, so that they are 
hastily decided as soon as they present themselves. For 
many other situations he surveys the pros and cons rapidly, 
finds one side decidedly more advantageous than the other, 
and quickly chooses it. A few situations he finds so involved 
that he needs to balance for hours, or even days, their rela- 
tive claims before he makes choice. But he keeps ideas 
inhibited by counter ideas long enough, and only long enough, 
in each case to make a rational choice between them. The 
weaker he then once for all dismisses, and allows the stronger 
to possess the scene and to follow their normal course into 
action. The struggle is evidently a struggle for possession 
of attention. The idea that dominates in attention is the 
one that will have the right of way to action. In consequence 
the problem here involved is that of holding alternatives 
before the attention the proper length of time and then 
fixing and keeping the attention upon the better one. Such 
direction of attention itself constitutes the choice so that, as 



Character and Will 279 

James says, '^ to think, to sustain a presentation, is the 
only moral act/' 

But to the extent to which one is normal it is his whole 
character that projects itself through his attention and into 
his acts. We have a tremendous impulse to attend in those 
lines toward which our characters turn us. Our deliberation 
consists in nothing else than weighing against each other 
conflicting impulses from the standpoint of the relative ap- 
propriateness of each to the kind of persons we intend to be. 
And when we choose one or the other it is always because at 
the moment it seems to us more befitting the character which 
we boast as ours. It is this character that projects itself 
into our conduct and stamps an image of ourselves into 
every detail of our acts. 

Question of freedom. — But are we not, then, free? Can 
we not choose to do either deed A or B ? Must we be borne 
into either one or the other of these by the momentum of 
our past in spite of our present wish? This is, I confess, a 
big question that has engaged the attention of philosophers 
for more than twenty centuries, and upon which they are 
not even yet agreed. We can not, of course, presume to 
answer it finally, but our study so far has prepared us for 
at least a provisional, practical attitude toward the matter, 
and one that would be supported by at least one of the lead- 
ing schools of philosophers of the present. 

Environment as limitation. — Influence of circumstances. — 
Two big factors stand out as limitations to our freedom — 
environment as an external one, and character, as indicated 
above, as an internal one. There is no doubt that environ- 
ment helps mightily to determine the course of our lives. 
Great general as Napoleon was he could not have stirred 
France, and later the civilized world, as he did had he not 
come upon the scene at a time when the writings of Rousseau 
and others had prepared men for a violent social and politi- 
cal revolution. Had Edison lived a century ago his inven- 



28o Human Conduct 

tions would have been impossible. Had King Philip not 
threatened Greece, Demosthenes would not have been a 
great orator. A casual suggestion, a chance business or 
professional opening, one^s presence at a critical place in 
the nick of time, has given a turn to many a life which re- 
made the man^s whole future. On the other hand, many a 
one has been wrecked by a combination of circumstances 
over which he had no control. The occasion, it has often 
been remarked, brings forth men to meet it. The kind of 
books written, the nature of the inventions produced, the 
style of oratory, the Idncl of genius that wins laurels, and a 
thousand other aspects of life are shaped very largely by the 
conditions of the time and place. 

Impotence of circumstances. — But, after all, circum- 
stances, as mereh^ external forces, are impotent. They can 
influence a man only in so far as he has a certain affinity 
for them. If they modify his life, it is because he from within 
chooses a kind of conduct relative to them, not because 
they as such drive him. For did we not learn in our very, 
first chapter that nothing can force itself upon one merely 
from without, and have we not found that fact illustrated 
in one application of psychology after another all through 
our course? Did we not learn that we must apperceive our 
facts, not merely take them in as they are? Did we not see 
that the meaning of a situation is one that the onlooker fits 
onto it, and that for this reason different persons under- 
stand it differently? Did we not hear that interest must 
lead the mind out to a fact before that fact can hope to get 
a hearing? Did we not discover that problems are solved 
not b}^ the solution thrusting itself upon the mind, but by 
the mind reaching out and trying on it its own hypotheses? 
Did we not see that we imitate chiefly such models, and 
are open mostly to such suggestions, as are attuned to what 
we already are within? Did we not learn in our recent 
chapter that not only voluntary but also spontaneous and 



Character and Will 281 

even involuntary attention are controlled from within rather 
than from without, and that this last differs from the first 
only in the fact that it is given in response to our deeply 
set biological needs — of which instinct takes care — while 
the first represents an effort to satisfy our conscious needs? 
Indeed, our whole study has been pointing to the fact that 
man, as a conscious self, is the center of his known world, 
and that its elements revolve around and subordinate them- 
selves to him rather than that they, as physical causes, de- 
termine him. Out of this impersonal world about him he 
takes what he chooses — what his whole inner life has pre- 
pared him to choose — and builds it together into his own 
personal world. 

And so when we are tempted to say that circumstances 
make the man we must remember that the circumstances 
are always relative to him. Only those are effective to 
which he lends an ear, and they can have only such effects 
as his mode of receiving them determines. Those for which 
he has no inner affinity bombard him as vainly as the school- 
boy ^s pebbles rattle against the sides of the battleship. Two 
men may live amid exactly the same circumstances — temp- 
tations to drink, facilities for dissipation, opportunities for 
theft — and one falls while the other passes through not only 
unscathed but really untempted. Similarly one person will 
pass through a series of situations full of the most excellent 
opportunities and yet remain entirely blind to them, while 
a second will pick from an apparently less auspicious set of 
conditions opportunities enough to make a dozen big men. 
Says some wise one. 

All the forces of evil may come upon a soul from without and fail 
to shake it. But the smallest evil within, that is loved and desired 
and continued, will accomplish what the outside attack has failed in. 

Adverse circumstances as spur. — Moreover, circumstances 
that are injurious to one may be helpful to another. What 
brings defeat to the first may be the condition of victory to 



282 Human Conduct 

the second. A sneer may discourage John, but make Peter 
stiffen his upper hp and plunge into the job with renewed 
vigor, determined to show the sneerers who is right. Lord 
Byron^s sudden rise to greatness is said to have been due to 
just such spur. Indeed it has frequently been observed 
that soft conditions make weak men, while hard ones per- 
versely make strong, successful men out of those whom they 
gave promise of crushing. There is really no other such 
valuable discipline as the discipline of difficulties. ^^ Sweet,'' 
says Shakespeare in a famous passage, ^^are the uses of 
adversity.'' Henry Ward Beecher reminds us : 

An acorn is not an oak tree when it is sprouted. It must go 
through long summers and fierce winters ; it has to endure all that 
frost and snow and side-striking winds can bring, before it is a full 
grown oak. These are rough teachers ; but rugged schoolmasters 
make rugged pupils. So a man is not a man when he is created ; 
he is only begun. His manhood must come with years. A man 
who goes through life prosperous, and comes to his grave without 
a wrinkle, is not half a man. 

In time of war whom does the general select for some hazardous 
enterprise? He looks over the men, and chooses the soldier who 
he knows will not flinch at danger, but will go bravely through 
whatever is allotted to him. He calls him that he may receive 
his orders ; the officer, blushing with pleasure to be thus chosen, 
hastens away to execute them. Difficulties are God's errands ; 
and, when we are sent upon them, we should esteem it a proof of 
God's confidence, and prize it accordingly. 

Another says : 

Supine, powerless souls have always fainted before hostile circum- 
stances, and sunk beneath their opportunities ; while men of power 
have wrestled, with sublime vigor, against all opposing men and 
things, and succeeded. in their noble efforts, Because They Would 
NOT Be Defeated. 

And so environment may not claim the credit (or the dis- 
credit) for determining a man^s life. It can lead him in a 
particular direction only provided he has within himself a 
certain momentum already carrying him thither. I do not 



Character and Will 283 

mean that the nature of one^s environment will be of no 
consequence. One must live a concrete life, and one can 
do that only by reacting upon his actual environment. And 
the life which he chooses will be, if he is a true man, relative 
to the conditions with which he is surrounded, and his par- 
ticular service the solution of problems which grow out of 
these conditions. One's life will be, then, different because 
circumstances are different, but only because he himself 
agrees that it shall be. Circumstances, that is, afford him 
his material, but he remains in the midst of them the archi- 
tect of the destiny constructed from them. 

Character as limitation. — Inertia of character, — Our cir- 
cumstances, then, group themselves about our character. 
What they shall be for us is determined by what we are. If 
we lack freedom, it is not because the outside world grips us 
fast. If we are held at all, it is by the second and more in- 
ternal factor involved — by the fact that we can not get 
away from ourselves. If any momentum sweeps us on, or 
if any inertia holds us back, it is that of our own character. 

And that the inertia of our own character — whether 
good or bad — does hold us within narrow lines, a very little 
observation will show. Men do not break away suddenty 
from the results of years of training. If one's life has been 
one of honesty, it is next to impossible for him to steal. His 
whole nature rises in revolt against his doing it and effectively 
restrains him. Instead of a struggle to avoid doing some 
evil inconsistent with his character it would take a struggle 
to do the evil. And the same thing is true of the doing 
of good for which one's character has not prepared him. 
When one is confronted by the occasion which demands it 
he will find himself shut off from it by a wide chasm. 

Character not mechanical. — But to admit that one's con- 
duct grows out of one's character is not to give up freedom. 
For character is no mere push. It is no such mechanical 
combination of forces as that which determines the course 



284 Human Conduct 

of a planet and makes the smallest detail of its motion pre- 
dictable thousands of years in advance. Character has, 
of course, its basis in accomplished facts, but these facts 
are grouped around an element of it which is even more 
fundamental — that is a purposive or, as the philosophers 
would say, a teleological, element. ^^ Man partly is and 
wholly hopes to be " and it is this hope hovering over him, 
as well as his already won habits, which makes up the whole 
of his character. And into an equilibrium around this 
purpose which runs through his life is thrown the system 
of habits in which his character is grounded. At this point 
he is ever growing in one direction or other, and his char- 
acter as evidenced by external reactions is continually but 
slowly shifting so as to keep itself always focused upon this, 
its dynamic center. Says George Eliot, 

Character is not cut in marble ; it is not something solid and un- 
alterable. It is something living and changing, and may become 
diseased as our bodies do. 

Such recast of character under a shifted life purpose you 
have all frequently observed. See a man once and notice 
how he uses his powers, and then meet him again five or ten 
years later, when either the process of steady growth or some 
important crisis has given him a different purpose in life, 
and you will find many traces of the old mannerisms, the 
old powers, the old habits, but put to a new use. The center 
of his life has shifted, but the old elements of character 
have grouped themselves about this new point of organiza- 
tion as its concrete support. 

Teleology in life. — But lest I seem to be talking in mys- 
teries I shall do now as the novelists who have jumped 
into the middle of their story — go back to the beginning 
and trace up the account. That all life is teleological — 
that it has hovering over it a purpose to be embodied — is 
evidenced even in its very lowest forms. Lowell, you re- 
member, when praising a day in June, exults 



Character and Will 285 

Every clod feels a stir of might, 
An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And groping blindly above it for light 
Climbs to a soul, in grass and flowers. 

and another New England poet imagines that 

Striving to be man the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form. 

And these poetic flights represent scientific truth. All ani- 
mate life does stretch toward the realization of an end. 
Bend a piece of iron and it will remain bent, but bend a 
growing twig and it will gradually straighten itself out into 
something of its normal condition. It has a form toward 
which it tends in spite of any external forces which oppose its 
realizing that form. Dr. Paul Carus, in his study of '^The 
Psychic Life of Micro-organisms/' found that even such 
simple organisms as the individual cells of our bodies adjust 
their conduct to ends to be realized, rather than solely to 
mechanical forces. And that this is true of forms large 
enough to be observed by the naked eye we all have seen. 
Hold a piece of glass between a fly and a bit of food and the 
fly will find its way around the glass, it being drawn on by 
the ideal of getting the food. A bit of shot, on the other 
hand, impelled only by mechanical forces, would stop dead 
at the glass. The distinguishing feature of all conscious 
life is, then, adjustment to ends ; that of inanimate life, 
impulsion by mechanical force. To be sure all animate 
creatures realize their ends by making use of a mechanism 
which their physical inheritance and their past reactions 
have developed, but in every adjustment this mechanism 
is grouped around the purpose to be realized — and hence 
partly drawn on from in front, not merely pushed from 
behind. 

And this teleological feature becomes more pronounced 
as we go upward in the scale of animal life. In so far as a 



286 Human Conduct 

creature has relatively little of it, but is largely controlled 
by mechanical reactions, it is regarded as a low form of 
life ; in so far as it has much, and is consequently resource- 
ful in its meeting of the problems of existence, it stands high. 
A creature is a self in just so far as a conscious purpose runs 
through its life ; it is a mere thing in just so far as its life is 
not grouped about such conscious purpose. To be sure 
one does not necessarily have much of this aggressive pur- 
posiveness merely because he is a human being, for many 
'^ featherless bipeds '^ drift on the same level of instinct 
upon which the higher animals live. But such members 
of the genus homo are, in so far, not selves in spite of their 
hairless and featherless foreheads. 

Life focused in purpose. — Every life then rises as a tidal 
wave out of an ocean of instinctive and habitual reactions. 
These latter make it substance, but the structure into which 
they shall form themselves is determined by the attractive 
force which raises them above their dead, mechanical level. 
To change the metaphor, our lives are trailing in the world 
of mechanical laws, and hence have their basis in the physi- 
cal mechanism organized into habits and instincts, but they 
open out into the realm of divine light — of pure purpose — 
and, in so far as we are selves, it is toward this junction of 
our finite lives with the world of pure purpose that the trail 
converges. 

Would you let me be so disrespectful to these spiritual 
realities as to attempt to hint by a diagram at what I mean ? 
If so, the upper diagram on the following page may represent 
the unorganized, scattered life of one who drifts on the instinc- 
tive level, while the lower one may represent him who has 
pressed forward into that selfhood which is proffered to — 
but not always accepted by — every self as the essence of 
its being. 

So, circumstances, as we saw, put themselves in equilib- 
rium about that system of habitual attitudes which make 



\ 



~~'~Z^ 



Character and Will 287 

up character, and character, in turn, now appears to group 
itseK about purpose. The ideal which a man chooses for 

himself is an integral 

part of him. If you 

are to predict his 

conduct you must 

not only know what 

he has done, but in 

what direction he is " 

headed — what his 

aims are. In fact 

his past actions are \^ \ 

valuable only in en- ' 

abling you to dis- 

cover what ideal is " 

probably hovering 

over him. And if, 

from a study of his 

behavior, you have 

not misjudged this, 

you can accurately predict what he will do, for you know 

his criterion of choice. He is what his purpose is, plus 

what his conduct has been. 

Freedom in power to choose ideal. — One's freedom, then, 
lies not so much in his power to choose what detailed acts he 
shall perform, as to choose what sort of person he intends to 
be. As for his acts, given this ideal, and given his past con- 
duct, they follow^ almost automatically from the combination. 
He does not so much will to perform this or that particular 
deed as, holding before him what sort of self he means to be, 
judges that, in this particular situation, such and such spe- 
cific actions are congruent or incongruent with that self. 
And as soon as their congruence is established they are 
handed over, as dominating ideas always are, to that bundle 
of habitual tendencies which make up his character, to be 



y 



Fig. 29. 



288 Human Conduct 

mechanically run off. Indeed many of his problems are not 
even brought to the level of conscious deliberation for ad- 
justment, but he intuitively feels the inconsistency with his 
ideals of the act to which he is tempted, and he merely replies, 
as Evangeline when coaxed to take a second lover, ^^ I can 
not.'^ It is this irresistible way in which conduct seems 
to spring out of character that has led many philosophers 
to deny that man is free to choose his own course. 

But as for that dominant choice of his — his eternal choice 
as a philosopher might say — as for that all-pervading ideal 
that continually hangs over him — as for that plan of life 
which he has chosen for himself — that is ruled by no me- 
chanical law. To accept it, and having accepted it to press 
forward into the harness, is his sovereign right as a person 
— indeed not only his sovereign right but his very essence 
as a self, so that by plunging into it he comes to life as one 
of the sons of God, but by holding back he remains at best 
^^ the paragon of animals.'' 

Such power the essence of free will. — But to choose this 
is enough, for as he presses onward into this choice his whole 
nature swings itself about it, and his conduct comes in its 
every detail to express it. The sense of what he means 
to be is ever with him — usually in the background where 
he is not explicitly conscious of it — and is running down 
into this appropriate act or that just a^, on a lower level, 
the will to eat runs out automatically into the specific acts 
of taking up the knife, the spoon, and the glass. He is free, 
but not capriciously so. He has had to win a will through 
that slow process through which he could make a personality, 
the normal expression of which itself is his wdll. For the will 
is not some mysterious power lurking back in one's cranium 
that can be called out in emergencies to. win his battles for 
him. It is only one's whole self, in the form in which he has 
slowly built it up, in action. '^ The whole mind active," 
says Angell, ^' this is the will. To say that there is no such 



Character and Will 289 

thing as the will (a statement which troubles many right- 
minded persons) is simply the psychologist's perverse way of 
saying that mentally there is nothing but will. There is no 
specific mental element to be called will because all states 
of consciousness are in their entirety the will/^ 

In the sense, of course, that the details of his acts are the 
product of his character reacting upon a definite environment, 
they are not free — that is, not capriciously free — but in 
the larger sense that they are expressions of that individual 
life that he, by exercising the divine right of every self, has 
chosen to be his, they have all the freedom that any brave, 
heroic nature could wish — the freedom to win out along one's 
own lines in the long run. One's acts can not be separated 
from himself, and to win a free life means first of all to win 
a true sel^. 

Resolve, resolve ! and to be men aspire, 

Exert that noblest privilege, alone 

Here to mankind indulged ; control desire ; 

Let GodKke reason, from her sovereign throne. 

Speak the commanding word, "I will," and it is done. 

Freedom to be won. — And so freedom is a thing to be 
won, not passively received. It belongs to those who are 
courageous and assertive enough to claim it. One of the 
poets holds that 

Perhaps the yearning to be so 
May make the soul immortal. 

and a similar thing is probably true of freedom. Our belief 
in our freedom may be the very condition of our possessing 
it. Professor James used to employ in this connection the 
illustration of a man in a lonely mountain pass obliged to 
leap a wide chasm or perish. If he doubted his ability to 
make the leap and sat idly down he would inevitably perish. 
If he tried the leap but lacked confidence in his ability to 
make it successfully, his lack of faith would militate against 



290 Human Conduct 

success, and probably bring his destruction. But if he 
went at the effort determined to succeed, and confident that 
he could do so, he could much more surely reach in safety 
the opposite bank. Faith in his success would itself help 
to realize it. ^^ He only can who thinks he can.'' Marden 
says : 

No one ever accomplishes anything in this world until he 
affirms in one way or another that he can do what he undertakes. 
It is almost impossible to keep a man back who has a firm faith 
in his mission and Avho believes that he can do the thing before 
him, that he is equal to the obstacles Avhich confront him, that 
he is more than a match for his environment. The constant 
affirmation of ability to succeed, and of our determination to do 
so, carries us past difficulties, defies obstacles, laughs at misfor- 
tunes, and strengthens the power to achieve. It reinforces and 
buttresses the natural faculties and powers, and holds them to 
their tasks. 

Elsewhere, in the same vein, this writer urges even per- 
sistent audible affirmation. Stoutly affirm to yourself, he 
advises, that you are what you wish to be — that you can 
do what 3^ou are required to do — and you will be able ; 
and he tells of a singer who was cured of a fatal timidity by 
following the advice of her master to stand every day before 
a mirror and repeat ^^ I, I, I,'' and to assure herself with the 
utmost confidence that she was already a great prima donna. 
^^ To think we are able,'' says Smiles, '^ is almost to be so ; 
to determine upon attainment is frequently attainment 
itself. Thus earnest resolution has often seemed to have 
about it almost a savor of omnipotence." 

This the highest type of freedom. — And in the long run 
this freedom which enables one gradually to build up a 
character projected in a definite direction is a far more effec- 
tive type of freedom than caprice could ever be. For it 
enables one to preserve the results of years of effort and 
focus them upon one line of conduct, thus putting one in 



Character and Will 291 

command of a machine possessed of almost irresistible mo- 
mentum. A capricious will that did not thus progressively 
organize its forces, but consisted of little, scattered spurts 
of whimsical choice, would be immeasurably less efficient. 
It is concentration and persistence that counts. Against 
these in the long run nothing can stand. ^' The weakest 
living creature, ^^ says Carlyle, ^^ by concentrating his powers 
on a single object, can accomplish something ; whereas the 
strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish 
anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its pas- 
sage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes 
over it with hideous uproar and leaves no trace behind. '^ 
'' Perpetual pushing and assurance, ^^ remarks Jeremy Col- 
lier, '^put a difficulty out of countenance and make a seem- 
ing impossibility give way,'' and Burke adds, ^^ The nerve 
that never relaxes, the eye that never blanches, the thought 
that never wanders — these are the masters of victory.'' 

EXERCISES 

1. Why may a novelist not have one of his characters suddenly 
reform ? 

2. Explain and justify the statement, quoted in the text, "He 
who would carry the ox must every day shoulder the calf. " 

3. If you unexpectedly found a person stealing, how would you 
explain his conduct? How does this show your faith in the unity 
of character? 

4. Are the author's remedies for the two forms of abnormal 
will practical? If not, what remedies do you propose? What is 
the relation between punishment — by nature or man — and the 
inhibition of too impulsive conduct? 

5. Is it true that we always choose such line of conduct as 
seems, at the moment, most befitting our character and ideals? 
Why, then, do we sometimes regret our act later? 

6. If one can control the direction of attention he can control 
conduct, for conduct tends to follow attention. Can he do this? 
How and to what extent ? 

7. Find examples of men who succeeded in spite of hard cir- 
cumstances. Can you explain why? 



292 Human Conduct 

8. Show how, and to what extent, conduct should be influenced 
by circumstances. 

9. Do you consider it fortunate or unfortunate that the momen- 
tum of a man's character holds him within narrow boundaries? 
Why? 

10. Is it true that one becomes essentially a different person 
when he chooses some new purpose in life, as, for example, to enter 
the ministry, or when some new responsibility is thrust upon him, 
as by the death of his father, thus leaving upon him the respon- 
sibility of supporting the family? To what extent could you say 
that this purpose is a factor in constituting his character? Show 
how his past acquisitions group themselves around this new pur- 
pose. 

11. Some one advises us to "Now and then be idle; sit apart 
and think." What place do such periods of contemplation have 
in the building of character ? (See Payot's " Education of the WiU,*' 
pages 141-207.) 

12. Does confidence in one's ability to win help him to dq so? 
Illustrate. Is it probable that faith in one's freedom may sim- 
ilarly help to" make him free ? What kind of faith must this be — 
an active or passive kind? 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE STRONG SELF — THE SOCIAL LION 

Tendency to self-seeking. — In speaking of social self- 
seeking Professor James writes as follows : 

We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in the sight 
of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves 
noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind. No more fiendish 
punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, 
than that one should be turned loose in society and remain abso- 
lutely unnoticed by the members thereof. If no one turned round 
when .we entered, answered when we spoke, or minded what we 
did, but if every person we met **cut us dead," and acted as if we 
were nonexisting things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would 
ere long well up in us from which the crudest bodily tortures would 
be a relief ; for these would make us feel that, however bad might 
be our pHght, we had not sunk to such a depth as to be unworthy 
of attention at all. . . . 

We are crazy to get a visiting list which will be large, to be 
able to say, when any one is mentioned, *' Oh, I know him well," and 
be bowed to in the street by half the people we meet. Of course 
distinguished friends and admiring recognition are the most de- 
sirable. Thackeray somewhere asks his readers to confess whether 
it would not give each of them an exquisite pleasure to be met 
walking down Pall Mall T\dth a duke on either arm. But in default 
of dukes and envious salutations almost anything will do for some 
of us, and there is a whole race of people to-day whose passion is to 
keep their names in the newspapers no matter under what heading, 
arrivals and departures, personal paragraphs, interviews — gossip, 
even scandal, will suit them, if nothing better is to be had. ... 
So that it comes about that persons of whose opinions we care 
nothing are nevertheless persons whose notice we woo, and that 
many a man truly great, many a woman truly fastidious in most 
respects, will take a deal of trouble to dazzle some insignificant 
cad whose whole personality they heartily despise. 

293 



294 Human Conduct 

Seeking dominance through dress. — And this perverseness 
is not merely a fad of the present day — one of the artificiah- 
ties for which civihzation is responsible. If not more pro- 
nounced it certainly is at least more obvious among primitive 
men, and even among the lower animals, than among en- 
lightened men. One mode b}^ w^hich this effort to command 
attention is expressed is through dress. In clothing decora- 
tion is older than utility, at least among people who live in 
warm climates. Tribes have been found in which the women 
considered themselves amply dressed with a string of beads 
around their necks. Elaborate figures tattooed in the skin 
serve many a savage as full dress. Even those garments 
which are worn for utility are made of as gaudy colors as 
possible, and profusely decorated with beads, shells, and the 
teeth or claws of animals. An East Indian petty king is 
said to have selected as the only, essential parts of the English 
evening dress the showy white shirt, the starched collar, 
and the silk hat, and to have presented himself, confident of 
proving a striking beau, attired only in these. 

This delight in gaudy display extends even to the lower 
animals. In most cases nature has made the male attractive 
to the female by reason of size, strength, or decorative colors, 
and by the way in which he struts when courting his mate, 
he shows that he does not fail to appreciate the favor which 
nature has conferred upon him. Whether beast or man this 
attire attracts attention to him, inspires in those about him a 
certain awe, and gives him in consequence a reassuring sense 
of power. And his self seems to expand or contract with 
the degree of success with w^hich he can thus find himself 
superior to others. 

A similarly occasioned self-assurance all of us have at 
times experienced. Who does not feel more aggressive 
and self-sufficient when well gowned than when shabbily 
attired? Clad in the latest fashion one can walk gamely 
down the main street, and press a claim confidently and 



The Social Lion 295 

effectively even with the most formidable citizen of the 
town. But take away his smart dress and you have taken 
away his self-confidence. Poorly clad he slinks timorously 
down the back alleys and speaks weakly and apologetically 
to even the meanest of his acquaintances. Surely clothes 
help to make a man, at least so far as his own sense of 
personal significance is concerned. 

Persons who are obhged to command a prestige to which 
their intrinsic merits alone would not entitle them in- 
variably seek such prestige through a display of magnificence. 
Thus police and army officers are decorated with highly 
colored stripes, brilliant buttons, tassels, etc. ; preachers 
wear gowns, collars buttoned behind, and other imposing 
forms of dress ; and autocratic monarchs surround them- 
selves wdth gorgeous luxury. Indeed, the more insecure 
a government is, the more extravagantly must it bolster 
itself up by such awe-inspiring display. On the one hand, 
such show^ commands the reverence of the subject, and on 
the other hand it inspires in the autocrat a saving self- 
assurance. 

Dominance through other forms of superiority. — But through 
effective decoration is only one way of nourishing a sense of 
superiority. Countless other ways answer equally well. It 
makes no difference in what one may excel. One^s yearning 
for some mark of strength is satisfied if only he can do or 
be something better than any one else. He may be more 
handsome, or fleeter of foot ; he may be able to lift a heavier 
weight, or put the shot farther ; he may be superior to 
others in conversational ability, or able to outwit his fellows 
in argument ; he may be able to paint a better picture, or 
compose a better song ; he may be able to dance better, or 
to rob other men of their sweethearts ; or, in default of these, 
he may be able to drink more liquor, or even to be more 
brazenly and recklessly wicked that any one else. It makes 
no difference what the feat may be : it is enough to satisfy 



296 Human Conduct 

the craving for strength that one prove himseh' in some 
respect a being to be taken account of. 

An3^thing that keeps this suggestion before the mind feeds 
the hunger for it. Hence the- enjoyment in inflicting, or 
even watching, torture. The cat loves to tease the mouse 
that is in her power, because to do so keeps the sense of her 
own superiority before her. The same motive explains the 
joy of the savage in torturing his enemy, instead of quickly 
killing him. So w4th gladiatorial shows and bull fights. 
Sympathetically watching the victor, the observer shares for 
the moment the conqueror^s own joy in mastery, and thus, 
at second hand, feeds that craving for effective self-assertion 
which continually gnaws at the vitals of every living being. 

Instinct to be strong legitimate. — The instinct, then, to be 
strong and aggressive seems to be a deeply rooted one. Man 
and the lower animals share it together. Each creature is 
self -expansive. Each attempts not only to hold his own but 
also to make himself a positive force in his sphere — to enlarge 
his place in the world. The lower animals are on the alert 
to make themselves more comfortable as to quarters, to get 
more or better food, to make themselves more clearly domi- 
nant in their own spheres. Men watch for opportunities to 
increase their wealth, to better their social position, to 
enjoy more pleasures, or in some other way to be bigger 
selves. A self is like an elastic ball compressed into a smaller 
volume than its normal, and constantly tending to expand. 
At any time it is only part of what it feels impelled to be. 
^^ Man partly is and wholly hopes to be,'^ and if the lower 
animals do not explicitly hope they at least blindly struggle 
to enlarge their sphere. Up from the plants, which struggle 
to crowd out their competitors, through the animals, which 
upon admission to a new herd fight for the leadership, to 
men, each of whom is ambitious for the leading roles in 
politics, social affairs, or industry, the craving for power, 
for strength, for dominance, is ever present. 



The Social Lion 297 

Nature^ s approval. — Now an instinct so deeply rooted 
as this one to make the most of one's existence must cer- 
tainly be legitimate. On every side we find for it confirma- 
tion. It is apparently a universal law that every creature 
must either grow or decay. There is no mere standing 
still. ^' To him that hath shall be given, and from him that 
hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to 
have.'' The world has no place for the weakling who feels 
himself called upon to apologize for the room he requires to 
stand upon. Of such passive, retiring creatures among plants 
and the lower animals nature shows her disapproval by 
quickly eliminating them in the struggle for existence. The 
^^ fit '' which she allows to survive are the active, the expan- 
sive, the aggressive. Among men, too, such noncombatants 
make no headway. They are classed as '^ sissy,'' ^^ effemi- 
nate," " spineless," and they count for nothing. The men 
upon whom the stamp of approval is set are strong, virile, 
self-confident men. When in the scheme of things providence 
assigned a spark of divine fire to any creature as his share in 
life she clearly expected him to fan that spark into an effective 
flame, or let it die out entirely and forfeit his place to another 
more aggressive. 

Society^ s approval. — It is plain, then, how much momentum 
backs up the red-blooded man's wish to avoid the appearance 
of being a milk-sop. Nobody who is worth while is willing 
to be a mollycoddle. One's whole nature revolts against 
spinelessness. And rightly so. To be worth while one must 
be strong. No student of ethics would counsel men to be 
flabby. No teacher would wish his students, and especially 
his boys, to be goody-goodies. If they are to be forceful and 
aggressive as men they must be spirited in youth. But the 
ethicist and the teacher alike want their wards to be real 
sports, not mock ones. The virility, the red-bloodedness, 
w^hich they prize must be real virility, and not some subtle 
form of weakness masquerading under the name of strength. 



298 Human Conduct 

Search for strength must be rationalized. — And this 
mistaking of subtle forms of weakness for strength is in- 
deed a deception against which men and women — and 
especially young men and women — must be on their guard. 
The instincts which men have brought over from the past 
are of such a character as to give rise very readily to this 
mistake. Every one has seen persons who thought they 
were acting very cleverly when in reality they w^ere merely 
making dunces of themselves. Probably no spectacle is 
more disgusting than this sort of '' smartness. ^^ And in the 
same way many persons imagine that they are exemplifying 
strength in conduct which, if they could see it in its true light, 
they would recognize to be extreme weakness. And the 
result is a no less pitiable spectacle than that which the 
'^ greenhorn '^ produces when he stupidly attempts to be 
^' smart.'' Both alike grow out of awkwardness — the 
former out of a social, and the latter out of a certain moral, 
awkwardness. If, then, it is legitimate to be strong and virile, 
as it certainly is, it is important to inquire how one can be 
so in the most consistent and the most effective way. The 
roughest lad has the stuff in him to make a truly virile man, 
just as the crudest rustic has the making of a cultured gentle- 
man, but in each this stuff must be rationalized. Our quest, 
then, must be : Where is this strength, for which the red- 
blooded youth is rightly seeking, to be found? 

Ostentatious dress. — Its value. — First, then, how about 
the method of seeking it through compelling the attention of 
others by spectacular dress, about which we spoke above? 
This represents a kind of power. Is the strength to be 
found in it of a really commendable kind? Well, to begin 
with, we must admit that at least in the lower stages of life 
it is. The gaudily plumed bird, or the beautifully striped 
tiger, is made really more successful in achievement on 
account of his beauty. It gives him a better chance than 
he otherwise would have in getting a mate, or perhaps even 



The Social Lion 299 

in dominating other creatures, and hence fits him better to 
hold his own in the struggle for existence and to produce 
descendants like himself. Indeed, scientists nowadays explain 
the handsome coloration of both plants and animals in terms 
of the advantage which it gives the creature in the struggle 
for existence. The beads, the painted faces, the gaudy coats 
and feathers of the savage, probably helped him in the same 
way. Likewise the barbarian chieftain, or even the monarch 
or general of civilized times, whose prestige must be artifi- 
cially bolstered up, gains added influence by reason of his 
imposing vesture. The added sense of power which wells 
up within each of these is indeed a true and legitimate one. 
Its artificiality. — But the instinct of display which grows 
out of this advantage has reference essentially to pre- 
civilized life. The awe which can thus be inspired is of a 
very superficial and childish sort. It can reach the savage 
and the unthinking, but it only disgusts really cultured 
men and women. For we have come to feel that a man 
should stand on merit that is intrinsic, rather than on any- 
thing so external and artificial as is dress. Robert Burns 
well-expressed this feeling for us once when a young Edin- 
burgh blood showed surprise at the poet's recognition of a 
farmer : 

Why, you fantastic gomeral, it was not the great coat, the scone 
bonnet, and the Saunders boot hose that I spoke to, but the man 
that was in them ; and the man, sir, for true worth, would weigh 
down you and me and ten more such any day. 

Indeed, any person who seems to be relying upon his finery 
to make an impression we regard as a kind of sham, and 
disparagingly call him a ^' fop.'' 

Violation of good taste. — Good taste has, in fact, swung to 
exactly the opposite of the savage love of display. We, of 
course, demand a proper regard for dress, but any effort 
to attract attention to oneself b}^ reason of unusual clothing 
is regarded as in bad form. Refined men and women in- 



300 Human Conduct 

stinctively shrink from anything which will make them 
spectacular. Instead of seeking clothing which will make 
him as conspicuous as possible, as was the delight of his 
brother of the forest, the cultured man feels constrained to 
select some modest suit that will attract as little attention 
to it as possible. He avoids extremes or oddity of any kind. 
No real gentleman, for example, would wear an evening dress- 
suit to a function where he had reason to believe no one else 
would wear one, nor would he wish to go without such if 
every one else were wearing them. He wishes as a gentleman 
to be unobtrusive in the crowd. On the whole we have 
come to feel that an appropriately dressed person must 
avoid fads, that he or she must be neatly but not ostentatiously 
attired, and that any effort to dazzle others by costliness or 
uniqueness of dress is somewhat boorish. The disposition 
to do so, to be sure, still continually crops out, but as the 
relic of a lower stage of civilization rather than as the best 
taste of the present. 

Slovenliness in dress. — But there is also a converse fault 
to this. One can make oneself even more vulgarly ostenta- 
tious by dressing beneath the established standard than by 
dressing above it. A shabbily dressed Cynic is said, upon 
entering the public bath at Athens, to have left his dirty 
rags alongside of the splendid clothes of the handsome sport, 
Alcibiades. Alcibiades, emerging from the bath first, donned 
the meaner garment, leaving his own instead. When the 
Cynic saw the substitution, he scorned to wear the dashing 
robes that had been left. ^' Ah,^^ said Alcibiades, ^^ I see 
that, despite your boasted humihty, you are prouder than 
I, for I am not ashamed to wear your clothing, but you are to 
wear mine.'^ 

Thus many persons take a foolish pride in being meagerly, 
even slovenly, dressed. They count it virile to be seen 
loafing on the street with the appearance of a tough. Or, if 
they do not go so far as that, they at least experience a certain 



The Social Lion 301 

sense of superiority in being sublimely indifferent to such a 
trivial matter as neat clothing. They have what they count 
a healthy contempt for the dandy who keeps himself con- 
tinually ^^ spruced up.'^ As for them they are above being 
proud. It is only for mammals darling little boy to go about 
with a broad starched collar and a big blue necktie on. But, 
as a matter of fact, are not these persons, just as the Cynic 
above, as proud in their own way as are those who indulge in 
childish display in theirs ? The former are boorish while the 
latter are foppish, but are not both traits alike savage in 
origin? And is the savage any less contemptible when he 
persists sneeringly in his filth than when he struts about with 
an extra feather in his hair? Do not both extremes repre- 
sent a very superficial and hence abortive way of realiz- 
ing that strength in conduct for which we are seeking the 
true expression? 

Dress and station in life. — In fact, what clothing one 
should wear is determined by his station in life. An 
American millionaire, recently deceased, was accustomed to 
act upon the principle that '^ fifty cents is enough to pay for 
a straw hat and it should last two seasons. ^^ This attitude 
was regarded as so eccentric that his statement of it was 
quoted, at his death, in nearly every newspaper in the 
countr}^. Such statement from a day laborer would have 
been taken as a matter of course — indeed would have 
seemed quite appropriate — but from a millionaire was 
regarded as an idiosyncrasy, and just a little boorish. A 
person in one station in life draws just as vulgar attention by 
underdressing as a person in another b^^ overdressing. Unless 
some moral principle forbid, good taste demands that one 
conform to custom. An actress must dress for the stage as 
she would not elsewhere, a minister must wear his proper 
garb, and social events must be attended in the dress ex- 
pected at them. Why all this? Simply in conformity 
with the principle of refinement that one avoid making 



302 Human Conduct 

himself conspicuous. Neither by dressing above what is 
expected nor below it, nor by peculiarity of speech or manner, 
nor by protruding his person in any way too freely before 
the group, may the true lady or gentleman attempt to make 
himself or herself in any degree the lion of the occasion. 

Clearly, then, elsewhere — in ways less artificial and exter- 
nal than is dress or manner — must that strength be sought 
which will make one a creature to be taken account of in the 
world. 

EXERCISES 

1. Is dissatisfaction with one's condition in life normal or ab- 
normal ? Under what conditions is such dissatisfaction fortunate, 
and under what conditions unfortunate? 

2. How important a motive in conduct, do you find, is the 
desire for approbation? Is it a healthy or an unhealthy motive? 

3. One often contends, regarding some bit of conduct which he 
is contemplating, or in which he has engaged, that he does not care 
what people think about it. Is that contention true? If so, on 
what measure of strength is he proceeding? Is this a healthy 
attitude ? 

4. To what extent is decided aggressiveness an asset to the in- 
dividual, and to what extent a Uability? 

5. To what extent is it true that "Clothing makes the man" ? 

6. Is it true that refined men and women avoid extremes ? But 
is such refinement, or is it not, a mark of strength ? ^^ 

7. Is a policy of cultivated extravagance the same thing as 
disregard of what others think ? Which is indicative of the greater 
strength ? 

8. Mention some other forms of cultivated oddity besides those 
mentioned in the text. Discuss their meaning and propriety. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE STRONG SELF— SELFISHNESS 

Pleasure as end. — ^^ There is nothing better for a man 
than that he should eat and drink and that he should make 
his soul enjoy good in his labor/' Thus wrote centuries ago 
the author of Ecclesiastes, and thus many a time since have 
men concluded. The Roman poet, Lucretius, sings : 

The treasure of a tranquil mind 
Is all that nature pleads for, for this span, 
So that between our birth and grave we gain 
Some quiet pleasures, and a pause from pain. 

^^ The end of our living is to be free from pain and fear.'' 
Hence, counsel these philosophers of pleasure, look after 
your own happiness and let the world take care of itself. 

It is not our business to work for crowns by saving the Greeks ; 
but to enjoy ourselves in good eating and drinking. What differ- 
ence does it mal^e to me how the world goes, so long as there is a 
quiet spot in which I may recline, a crust to eat, and a friend to talk 
with? I will lie back and watch the current of the world's misery, 
as from a safe shelter on the shore I might' watch the tempest- 
driven vessel, taking a mild satisfaction in the thought that it is 
some one else's peril, not my own. 

How about this method of making life worth while? In 
the search for pleasure can that strength be found for which 
we seek? 

Value of pleasure. — To begin with we must certainly 
admit that pleasure has its value. Physically it is a tonic 
to the system. Who has not seen the eyes sparkle, the cheek 
redden with a healthy flush, the heart and lungs bound into 
vigorous action, and the whole body assume a tone of 

303 



304 Human Conduct 

heightened vitahty in consequence of experienced joy? 
From the secretion of the glands to the activity of the mind, 
the whole physical make-up of a man is stimulated and vivi- 
fied by pleasure. There is no such potent medicine as a 
hearty laugh, either for body or soul. ^^ All work and no 
play makes Jack a dull boy/^ has been abundantly verified. 
If one is to be keen, alert, and vigorous, he must have experi- 
enced his share of the legitimate joys which flesh is heir to. 

Indeed, too often pleasure is undervalued by those w^ho 
would serve society. Our churches, for example, would do 
far better if they would frankly recognize the value of the 
pleasures in the amusements which they find it necessary 
to condemn, and provide real substitutes of legitimate 
pleasures for them, than by simply trying to crush them 
out with nothing to take their place. Whately says : 

Mere innocent amusement is in itself a good when it interferes 
with no greater, especially as it may occupy the place of some other 
that may not be innocent. The eastern monarch who proclaimed 
a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure would have 
deserved well of mankind had he stipulated that it should be 
blameless. 

Pleasure has its value, just as fine clothing, or good furniture, 
or anything else that satisfies desire, has value. No one has 
any more right to rob any person of a single iota of it which 
properly belongs to him than to rob him of his money. 

No sterile spots. — We are coming to feel that to be true, 
and, in consequence, are concerning ourselves about play- 
grounds, both for children and adults, and about means of 
legitimate amusement. This is particularly evident in 
our changed attitude toward the joys of childhood. Once 
men felt that this childish impulse toward play and innocent 
amusement was to be crushed out in the interest of ^^ break- 
ing the colt,^' of grinding the devil out of him. But now we 
feel that if a person is to have a normal adulthood he must 
have had a full, rich, joyous childhood. Says Longfellow : 



Selfishness 305 

Oh thou child of many prayers ! 

Life hath quicksands, — life hath snares ! 

Care and age come unawares ! 

Like the swell of some sweet tune, 
Morning rises into noon, 
May glides onward into June. 

Childhood is the bough where slumbered 
Birds and blossoms many-numbered ; — 
Age, that bough with snows encumbered. 

Gather, then, each flower that grows, 
When the young heart overflows. 
To embalm that tent of snows. 

Bear a Hly in thy hand ; 

Gates of brass cannot withstand 

One touch of that magic wand. 

Bear, through sorrow, wrong, and ruth, 
In thy heart the dew of youth. 
On thy Ups the smile of truth. 

And in a similar vein the great Frenchman, Rousseau, 
calls upon men to prize the joys of youth and to foster 
rather than crush them. The life most worth while is that 
which is fullest and richest at every moment of its existence, 
not merely successful at its end. No one of its stages may be 
made unnecessarily sterile without leaving the whole life 
the poorer for this sterile spot. A legitimate joy enriches 
the life of a man even more surely than material goods, and 
to rob him of the one is no less reprehensible than to rob him 
of the other. Life must have content. If pleasures are to 
be spurned, it is only in so far as they handicap one in the 
search for some larger end. The wise man will not seek to 
keep out the things which make life rich ; but will only con- 
cern himself so to order them that they may have their due 
place. Certainly the hatred of pleasure merely because it is 
pleasure is a very barbarous philosophy. 



3o6 Human Conduct 

Get all the laughter that you can. 

The future never will repay 
To you or any other man 

The laughs you overlooked to-day. 

Inadequacy of pleasure as an end. — Pleasure a by-product. 
— But, after all, can the search for pleasure as the chief plan 
of one's life satisfy the strong man ? Is it not indeed a self-de- 
feating search ? Is not the surest way to miss pleasure to seek 
specifically after it? ^^ The watched-pot never boils/'' and 
so it seems to be with happiness. Seek it and it will flee from 
you ; plunge into your work and you will find it at the most 
unexpected places. In fact one can get genuine pleasure 
only as a by-product. It is only the measure of the extent to 
which he has succeeded in his work. One who works hard at 
a problem in Geometry experiences intense joy when he at 
last succeeds in solving it. Says Sidgwick : 

A certain degree of disinterestedness seems to be necessary in order 
to obtain full enjoyment. A man who maintains throughout an epi- 
curean mood, fixing his aim on his own pleasure, does not catch the 
full spirit of the chase ; his eagerness never gets quite the sharpness 
of edge which imparts to his pleasure its highest zest. Similarly, 
the pleasures of thought and study can only be enjoyed in the 
highest degree by those w^ho have an ardor of curiosity which 
carries the mind temporarily away from self and its sensations. In 
all kinds of art, again, the exercise of the creative faculty is attended 
by intense and exquisite pleasure, but in order to get them one must 
forget them. 

One of our poets put this truth aptly when he wrote : 

Two angels came and spoke to me. 

The face of one was full of beauty ; 
The other wore a sadder look ; 

And these their names were : Joy and Duty. 

I said to Joy, "I'll follow thee 

Wherever thou shalt go to lead me ; 
I'll serve thee with a willing hand 

Wherever thou may'st chance to need me." 



Selfishness 307 

But Joy said, ''No, it may not be. 

Because we twain are sister graces, 
And Duty is the elder one ; 

We never dare to change our places. 

But follow on where duty calls. 

And I will ever more attend thee ; 
And while thou servest at her will 

My presence I will surely lend thee/' 

Desire for pleasure insatiable. — In the second place, if 
you had to measure your success in life by the degree to which 
you had satisfied 3^our craving for pleasure, your prospects 
would be poor indeed. For the desire for pleasure is in- 
satiable. It has a strange way of growing by what it feeds 
upon. The more you have of it the more you want. It is 
like the nine-headed Hydra which Hercules was sent to kill ; 
every time he cut off one of the heads two others grew forth 
in its place. At first slight pleasures are sufficient, but soon 
these became insipid and must give way to progressively 
more extravagant ones, just as the drunkard demands each 
year stronger and stronger drink. Everybody knows the 
latter end of such voluptuary — a restless slave of excite- 
ment, a characterless butterfly of humanity ; and yet with 
it all he is, in the bottom of his heart, ready to admit that 
his craving is as far from satisfied as it was in the beginning — 
nay even that his dissatisfaction is as many times as great 
as his craving is bigger than it once was. 

Gives life too little meaning. — Again, life has little meaning 
if pleasure is the last word. The pleasure seeker makes it 
his business to take rather than to give. Unless by accident 
he makes no valuable contribution to the world. He leaves 
no glory in his wake. His life is like a candle that flickers 
for a time and then goes out, leaving only darkness behind 
— as if it had not been. Pleasure alone is too shallow to 
give any real zest to existence. The advocates of happiness 
as the end of life have nearly all been pessimists. The 



3o8 Human Conduct 

early Greek Epicureans were ready to commit suicide when 
the world no longer went well with them. The Ecclesiast 
confesses : 

I said in my heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, 
therefore enjoy pleasure. . . . And whatsoever mine eyes de- 
sired I kept not from them. I withheld not mine heart from any 
joy ; for my heart rejoiced in all my labor : and this was my portion 
of all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands 
had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do, and behold 
all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under 
the sun. 

Professor James says, in a somewhat similar vein : 

If this is the whole fruit of the victory, we say, if the genera- 
tions of mankind suffered and laid down their hves, if prophets 
confessed and martyrs sang in the fire, and all the sacred tears 
were shed for no other purpose than that a race of creatures of such 
unexampled insipidity should succeed, and protract into endless 
ages their contented and inoffensive lives — why, at such a rate, 
better lose than win the battle, or at all events better ring down 
the curtain before the last act of the play, so that a business that 
began so importantly may be saved from so singularly flat a wind- 
ing up. 

The pleasure seeker weak. — And finally — which is from 
our standpoint the most serious objection — the way to 
pleasure is not the way to strength at all. It is the way rather 
to weakness. If a man is to be strong, he must plow his 
way firmly to the goal which he has determined upon. He 
must not permit himself to be buffeted about by external 
conditions. He must stand solidly as a pillar of rock un- 
affected by the storms which rage about. But the pleasure 
seeker knows no such resoluteness. He will endure no 
storms for the glory of victory. His policy is rather to take 
life easy — to drift. His conduct conforms not to some firm 
standard determined from within, but to the endlessly shifting 
opportunities for pleasure getting which environment pre- 
sents from without. He is the slave of circumstances, not 



Selfishness 309 

their master. He is a happy-go-lucky sort of fellow who 
looks after his own happiness and lets the world wag on as 
it will. Everybody knows such irresponsible persons. 
Everybody laughs at their carelessness and likes them in a 
sort of way — for they are too inoffensive to make any one 
really angry — but certainly nobody ever thought them 
strong. 

Selfish success as end. — To live for pleasure, then, is not 
sufficient for the virile man, because such life is flimsy, 
passive, drifting. He wants a life in which he can cultivate 
and exemplify power. He wants to be able to feel that he is 
of consequence in the world. Suppose, then, he seek this 
through an effort to win success in life in the popular sense — 
success as measured by riches, magnificence, reputation, 
etc. And, that we may properly test the legitimacy of this 
plan, let us suppose that he makes such success the sole 
aim of his life, using everything and every person merely as 
stepping stones to this. And let us be fair enough to give 
him credit with doing this with the utmost tact, so that he 
will not too readily alienate his fellows whom he thus uses 
as tools. 

Prevalence. — Without doubt a large number of people do 
thus regard their own interests as central in the universe, 
and look upon their fellows as means created to administer 
to these. Society is for them merely a business asset to be 
sucked like a lemon, cherished as long as it continues to yield 
sustenance, and then thrown ruthlessly away. Napoleon 
appears to have been dominated by some such ideal. He was 
devoured by personal ambition. His soldiers were his tools 
— driven to slaughter whenever his interests required. 
Many a politician has regarded his fellows in a similar light, 
and there are modern emperors who have been suspected 
of the same sort of selfishness. That large numbers of plain 
men — traveling salesmen, merchants, employers, employees, 
labor agitators — are likewise often dominated by this same 



3IO Human Conduct 

ideal everybody knows. They not only ^^ work '' their 
fellows ^^ for what they are worth /^ but even boast of 
having done so. They pride themselves on having made their 
point, either by coercing or jollying or hoodwinking those 
with whom they deal. That the transaction was morally 
right or wrong does not concern them. It is enough that 
they have succeeded. And in evidence of their success 
they have houses, or political positions, or social prestige. 

Inadequacy. — Self-defeating. — How about the legitimacy 
of this ideal? Can we find here what the rational man is 
really seeking? Well, on the one hand, we must observe 
that no policy of life is more certain of failure to reach its 
own ends than this one. Success itself is made more un- 
certain by this mode of seeking it. If one's attitude toward 
his fellows is not tempered with a certain amount of genuine 
unselfishness, they are likely in time to pay him back in his 
own coin. The cooperation and sympathy which at critical 
times he will need are likely to be withheld from him, for, 
no matter how much overlaid with diplomacy, his elemental 
selfishness can not help having continually shone through. 
Thus in the long run he will lose instead of gain by having 
thought only of himself. It is sometimes not only more 
blessed but more profitable ^' to give than to receive.'' 

Selfish success empty. — But even if he do succeed in gain- 
ing the objects which he is directly seeking, his success 
proves a surprisingly poor one. Men who possess in the 
largest measure the very things which he is seeking are 
unanimous in saying that they do not bring the expected 
happiness. Says some one : 

You have thirty horses in your stable, you can mount but one, 
ride after but two to six. To be truly rich one should have stomachs 
in proportion to the number of dinners he could afford, senses multi- 
plied according to the amount of his stock in bank. At the close 
of his life the richest man has hardly spent more upon his own 
positive enjoyment than the poor man. He has eaten and slept, 
and the poor man can do as much and the proprietor scarcely more. 



Selfishness 311 

Rothschild is forced to content himself with the same sky as the 
poor newspaper writer. The most opulent banker can not order 
a private sunset or add one ray to the magnificence of the star- 
light. The same air swells all lungs, the same kind of blood fills 
all veins. Each one possesses only his own thoughts and his own 
senses. Soul and body — these are all the property which a man 
owns ; nay, he does not even own these, for he merely has them on 
trust from the Creator. 

The life of the man who has made it his chief business to 
secure these selfish ends is at its end empty, cramped, and 
sterile. He is frozen by the very atmosphere which his own 
moral coldness has chilled. Even the hard-headed Herbert 
Spencer, whom certainly no one would accuse of sentimen- 
talism, says of such a one : 

If we contrast the state of a man possessing all the material 
means to happiness, but isolated by his absolute egoism, with the 
state of an altruistic man relatively poor in means but rich in 
friends, w^e may see that various gratifications, not to be purchased 
by money, come in abundance to the last and are inaccessible to 
the first. 

In fact the price which one must pay for this sort of success 
is too great. Mrs. Barbauld puts the matter well when she 

says : 

Would you, for instance, be rich? Do you think that single 
point worth the sacrifice of everything else? You may, then, be 
rich. Thousands have become so from the lowest beginnings, 
by toil, and patient diligence, and attention to the minutest arti- 
cles of expense and profit ; but you must give up the pleasures of 
leisure, of a vacant mind, of a free, unsuspicious temper. If you 
preserve your integrity, it must be, unless you are singularly 
blessed, a coarse-spun and vulgar honesty. These high and lofty 
notions which you brought with you from the schools must be 
considerably lowered, and mixed with the baser alloy of a jealous 
and worldly-minded prudence. 

You must learn to do hard, if not unjust, things, and as for the 
nice embarrassments of a delicate and ingenious spirit, it is neces- 
sary for you to get rid of them as fast as possible ; you must shut 
your heart against the muses, and be content to feed your under- 



312 Human Conduct 

standing with plain household truths ; in short, you must not 
attempt to enlarge your ideas, or polish your taste, or refine your 
sentiments, but must keep on in one beaten track without turning 
aside to the right or the left. ** But I can not submit to such drudg- 
ery as this ; I feel a spirit above it.'* 'Tis well ; be above it, then ; 
only do not repine that you are not rich. Learn to prize what you 
choose in place of riches. 

Belongs to lower order of life, — And, in the third place, one 
who takes this attitude turns back from the path of human 
progress and seeks his comrades below. For untempered 
selfishness has come up from the lower levels of life. It is 
the way of the lower animals and of the savage. Plants 
ruthlessly crowd each other for room. Each dog watches 
for the opportunity to snatch the other^s bone. Pigs root 
each other out of the feed trough. Similarly, savages think 
only of themselves. If they forbear to indulge in undisguised 
selfishness, it is only because some sort of fear holds them in 
check. Egoism is their natural trait, and from this early 
egoism society develops to the loyalty of its enlightened 
stages. It is, then, from below that the selfish man gets his 
characteristics. Through his shrewd and selfish aggressive- 
ness he does not rise above his more socialized fellow man 
but lapses below him. Because he lacks the backbone to 
push upward w^ith the trend of society he permits himself to 
drift back to the more primitive level. He takes the line of 
least resistance. And so, despite his wink over outwitting 
his too trusting neighbor, despite his complacence in the 
thought of his ability to use his fellows as tools to get what 
he w^ants, he is in reality a very weak mortal. 

Ask not whether he has or has not been successful according 
to the vulgar standard of success. . . . What avails it that broad 
lands have rewarded his toil, or that all has, at the last moment, 
been stricken from his grasp? Ask not whether he brings into 
retirement the wealth of the Indies or the property of a bankrupt ; 
whether his couch be of down or rushes, his dwelling a hut or a 
mansion. He has lived to little purpose, indeed, if he has not 



Selfishness 313 

long since realized that wealth and renown are not the true ends of 
exertion, nor their absence the conclusive proof of ill fortune. 
Whoever seeks to know if his career has been prosperous and 
brightening from its outset to its close — if the evening of his days 
shall be genial and blissful — should ask not for broad acres or 
towering edifices, or laden coffers. Perverted old age may grasp 
these with the unyielding clutch of insanity ; but they add to his 
cares and anxieties, not to his enjoyments. Ask rather, "Has he 
mastered and harmonized his erring passions? Has he lived a 
true life?i 

A flabby policy. — But neither the policy of pleasure seeking 
nor of untempered selfishness needs an elaborate argument 
to refute its claim on the strong man or woman. They have 
their answer in the fact that they simply do not and can not 
satisfy his yearnings. In moments of moral lethargy he 
may ask himself : ^' For whom do I labor and bereave my 
soul of good?'' and despairingly conclude: ^^ Better is a 
handful with quietness, than both the hands full with 
travail and vexation of spirit.'' But in his better moments 
his heart is closed to any such sentiment. His whole nature 
revolts against the narrowness of the purely selfish life. 
His heart is warmed with an ardor of generosity that, sleep 
as it sometimes may, simply refuses permanently to down. 
The plan to get most out of his life for himself makes no appeal 
to the courage, the chivalry, the heroism that is surging 
within the breast of every true man. A man of consequence 
is not seeking a chance to drift smoothly. As a sport he 
courts tragedy, for it is only such that can give zest to his 
life. He wants real battles to fight, and to fight under 
conditions that will make their winning worth while. The 
slimy ways of the egoist leave untouched the deepest chords 
of his nature. Deep in his soul he can not be content to 
pick out the easy road of the '^ best pohcy " man. The 
cowardly, the weak-kneed, the cold-blooded, the despondent, 
may do so if they wish, but as for him the whole torrent of 

1 Horace Greeley. 



314 Human Conduct 

his life goes spontaneously and irresistibly in the opposite 
direction. Repose, comfort, prudence — nay, even logic — 
may possibly lie here, but strength at least lies elsewhere. 

Courage, brother, do not stumble, 
Though thy path is dark as night, 
There's a star to guide the humble ; 
Trust in God and do the right. 

Let the road be long and dreary, 
And its ending out of sight ; 
Foot it bravely — strong or weary — 
Trust in God and do the right. 

Perish ''policy" and cunning. 
Perish all that fears the light ; 
Whether losing, whether winning, 
Trust in God and do the right. 

Trust no party, trust no faction, 
Trust no leaders in the fight, 
But in every word and action. 
Trust in God and do the right. 

Trust no forms of guilty passion, 
Friends can look like angels bright ; 
Trust no custom, school, or fashion, 
Trust in God and do the right. 

Some will hate thee, some will love thee. 
Some will flatter, some will slight, 
Turn from man and look above thee, 
Trust in God and do the right. 

Simple rule and safest guiding. 
Inward peace and inward light. 
Star upon our path abiding. 
Trust in God and do the Right. 

EXERCISES 

1. Would it be going too far to say that one is under moral ob- 
ligation to enjoy life and to see that others enjoy it? 

2. Do you know any pleasure seeker who is satisfied with what 
he gets ? Do you know any who is dissatisfied ? 



Selfishness 315 

3. Is it true that the desire for pleasure, or for selfish success, 
grows by what it feeds upon? Is that an argument against it as 
a valid aim for life? 

4. Do you feel it to be true that the search for pleasure could 
not give sufficient zest to life? 

5. Can a consistent pleasure seeker stand up, when challenged, 
for principle? Or if he does so, does he become actuated by some 
other ideal than pleasure? 

6. Does the writer do justice to the persons seeking dominance 
over others as their ideal? Does such person not prize the domi- 
nance itself, rather than the economic goods which come from his 
victory ? Is that a legitimate ideal ? 

7. Do you know of cases where excessive selfishness has been 
self-defeating? Do you know of any notable cases where it has 
not been? 

8. What reason have you for believing that riches would, or 
would not, make you feel that you had lived a successful life ? 

9. As you watch the behavior of a selfish man in a crowd, are 
you convinced that selfishness is a relic of a lower order of life? 
What is its biological reason for existing? To what extent do 
present social conditions modify that reason? 



CHAPTER XXI 
THE STRONG SELF — INDEPENDENCE 

In our preceding chapter we found that the strength which 
every red-blooded man is seeking is not to be found in pleas- 
ure, or in any other form of simply selfish conduct. Such 
conduct is too flabby. It is the way of the drifter and not 
of the fighter. It is the policy of those who, in the words 
of a great German writer, so govern their lives ^^ that they 
may sleep well.^' And, being passive and pliable, it can 
touch no responsive chords in the bosom of the restless, 
courageous man for whom we are seeking a satisfying plan 
of life. 

Desire for independence. — But there is another ancient 
ideal which is, at least on the surface, free from this charge 
of cowardice. It is the ideal of independence. This ideal 
is as old as the race, and yet as fresh as this morning's sun. 
Every strong man feels its stir within his soul. Tell me, 
why do men wish to lay up money ^^ for a rainy day '^ or 
against old age? Why do they often hesitate until the last 
extremity, or sometimes even starve, before they will appeal 
to charity ? Why do they have such a horror of going to the 
almshouse? Why do strong pupils refuse help on their 
problems when it is offered to them and insist upon working 
out the difficulty for themselves? Why do men like to live 
in their own houses better than in rented ones, and prefer 
to work for themselves rather than to hire to another ? Why 
have states always wished to be free and self-governing? 
Is it not because men like to feel that they are self-sufficient 

316 



Independence 317 

and dependent upon no one? Is it not because they dread, 
above everything else, to hang as a parasite upon another? 

Yes, we all feel strong when we are independent ; weak 
when we are the tools of external forces. And so from the 
dawn of history men have sought to find and to nurture the 
strength which they felt to become a manly man in inde- 
pendence. The kind of independence sought has varied 
from time to time and from man to man. Sometimes one 
has revolted against slavery to his passions, or subservience 
to the state, or dependence upon his fellow men, or obedi- 
ence to social customs, or what not. But in every case he 
has felt that his dignity as a man demands that he stand 
up erect and clear-cut as an individual, and maintain a sub- 
lime indifference to his surroundings. But on the whole 
the earlier ideal was that of independence of the accidents 
of fortune and of human passion ; the later that of independ- 
ence of one^s fellows and of social customs. 

Independence of fortune as ethical ideal. — Ancient "phi- 
losophers. — It would be hard to say how early philosophers 
began to set forth this doctrine of indifference to circum- 
stances as an ideal of life. Certainly the earliest of the 
Greek thinkers of whom we have record counseled such 
restraint. Even much earlier than this, the Chinese teachers 
and the Hebrew sages urged it. But in India, in the religion 
of Buddhism, it came particularly to head. Salvation, for 
the Buddhist, is to be found in perfect self -discipline. One 
must free himself from all worldly attachments. He must 
cease to care for any of the petty whims of fortune which 
may come upon him. He must crush out his passions. He 
must cease to care for reputation, for friends, for worldly 
goods, even for the welfare of his own body. It is only 
when he has risen above all human desires that he is fitted 
for heaven. To bring about this annihilation of passion 
the Hindoo is said to betake himself often to the hardships 
of the desert, to gash himself with knives, and even to lie 



3i8 Human Conduct 

for hours in the hot sand beneath a burning sun. And for 
all this he would spurn pity. In this victory over self he 
is more than rewarded. 

Nor has the Hindoo stood alone in this effort to win the 
goods of life through steeling himself against nature. Many 
are those who have followed in his footsteps. Among these 
were the Cynics and the Stoics of the Graeco-Roman world, 
and the religious ascetics of all ages, but particularly the 
Christian ascetics of medieval times. Among them, too, 
were Spinoza, and Schopenhauer, and the Puritans of our 
own early history. 

The Stoics. — The emotions, so the Stoics, who are repre- 
sentative of all of these, taught, represent a disease, an im- 
perfection, a disturbance of the reason itself. True virtue 
consists in living free and undisturbed ; and that is only 
possible as we refuse to allow our w^ill to be coerced by those 
external things and events which lie outside the power of 
the mind itself. 

It is the good fortune of the wise man, not to need any good for- 
tune. One prays thus: how shall I be released of this? another 
thus: How shall I not desire to be released? Another thus: How 
shall I not lose my little son? Thou thus : How shall I not be 
afraid to lose him? Turn thy prayers this way and see what comes. 

True joy is a serene and sober motion and they are miserably out 
that take laughter for rejoicing. The seat of it is within, and there 
is no cheerfulness like the resolution of a brave mind that has for- 
tune under its feet. He that can look death in the face and bid it 
welcome, open the door to poverty, and bridle his appetites, this is 
the man whom Providence has established in the possessions of in- 
violable delights. 

The medieval Christians, — • How much this attitude 
has characterized Christian civilization, all well know. 
From the very first Christianity has urged men to crucify 
the flesh. How the ascetics of medieval times tortured 
themselves in order to do this is an old story to everybody. 
They secluded themselves in dreary deserts, or shut them- 



Independence 319 

selves up in moldy monasteries. They imposed upon 
themselves perpetual silence, or vowed not to raise an arm 
for so long a period that the member became paralyzed in 
consequence. In every conceivable way they endeavored 
to mortify the flesh and its desires. And just what they 
did in the extreme many men in all ages, the present as well 
as the past, have been trying to do. And the motive for 
this, although often in name religious, is rather just that 
desire to feel that one is stronger than the things with which 
he deals, and is able hence to be their master. 

Strength of the doctrine. — For my part I can not help 
admiring the grim heroism that such life demands. Surely 
in its own way the success attained has often been worthy 
of a moral giant. The old Greek Cynic, Diogenes, went 
about with a cup from which to drink and a tub in which 
to live, and of these two he threw away the cup as a luxury 
upon seeing a child drink out of his hands. With this meager 
quantum of worldly goods he was abundantly satisfied. St. 
Francis, founder of the order of Franciscans, when asked 
what could afford man his sweetest experience, replied that 
it would be to be out on a bitterly cold night, without food 
or fire, and, while the storm and the sleet cut fiercely with- 
out, to find the door of the only hut in the wilderness slammed 
in his face. Seneca thought himself rich in being able to 
count the blue heavens above him as his only valued pos- 
sessions. One of the Stoics says : 

I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must go into 
exile ; does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and 
cheerfulness and contentment? Tell me the secret you possess. 
I will not, for this is in my power. But I will put you in chains. 
Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You may 
fetter my leg, but my will not even Zeus himself can overpower. 
I will throw you into prison. My poor body, you mean. T will 
cut off your head. When, then, have I told you that my head 
alone can not be cut off? 

Is not such steadfastness really to be praised ? 



320 Human Conduct 

And surely this self-denial is an essential of manhood. 
No one can make himself worth while without it. It is 
only the spineless who are the slaves of every temptation 
that comes their way. A man of character must often 
stand up, with a firm backbone and a stiff upper lip, and 
resolutely maintain his equilibrium in spite of the frenzy 
of opposition, the storms of passion, or the allurements of 
pleasure that rage or coax about him. He must be prepared 
to say ^^ No.'* He must be ready to sacrifice the pleasures 
which weaken him. And only he who has forged his way 
upward to a place of consequence in life know^s how much 
self-denial success requires. To make one's hfe count de- 
mands sacrifice, and whoever is not prepared to practice 
self-denial has no part with the strong and the noble. 

Weakness of the doctrine. — Negation a wasteful method. 
— But does the self-denial of the ascetic ring quite true to 
you? Is he prompted to it by the right motive? Why 
should one deny oneself? Merely for the sake of denial? 
Surely not. That would be to seek an empty life, and if 
life is worth while it is certainly not most worth while when 
it is empty. Life is made significant by what it contains, 
not by what it excludes. If you wish to fill a pitcher with 
water, you do not first pour out the air, but merely pour in 
the water and let the air take care of itself. If you wish to 
drive the darkness from a room, you strike a light and the 
darkness dissolves beneath it. So it is with the temptations 
of life. They can best be met, not by directly fighting 
against them, but by plunging into some absorbing mission 
which, by its own fullness of possession, excludes such as 
are incongruent with it. The life worth while must be a 
positive life, not a negative one. We have too many people 
who are morbidly afraid of making blunders, and who in 
consequence never plunge boldly forward. It is not the 
man who is continually feeling his way, overanxious lest he 
do something amiss, who counts for most. The aggressive, 



Independence 321 

pulsating life, full of activity, containing much good but 
with some evil intermixed, nets more of value than the 
passive, negative sort of life that avoids all evil, but in doing 
so has accomplished also little good. 

Life must have content. — Indeed the good life must be as 
inclusive as possible. It must have as its nucleus a purpose 
worth while, and must group around this purpose just as 
rich a content as possible. It must exclude some things, 
to be sure, but only such as run counter to its mission. In 
so far as music, art, literature; travel, table luxuries, etc., 
interfere, they must be given up, but in so far as they do 
not interfere they should be kept. A life that is narrowed 
down solely to its routine tasks is like the thin rill running 
through the meadows ; a personality that is centered in 
its work but broadened by legitimate means of culture and 
enjoyment organized about this work is like the wide river 
flowing through the valley. And just therein lies the error 
of the ascetic. He forgets that self-denial is a mark of strength 
only when it is rational, and that it is rational only when 
it is practiced not for itself, but for a positive purpose. In 
consequence, instead of enriching, he impoverishes his life 
by every success that he attains. He is making not toward 
strength, toward individuality, but toward stolid lethargy, 
toward apathy. 

Asceticism and vulgarity. — Indeed just such has always 
been the outcome of this ideal. The Cynics did not respect 
even the ordinary decencies of life. The monks of the 
Middle Ages were often scandalously filthy. One of the 
greatest of the archbishops of England was judged too holy 
to be bathed, even after his death, and was in consequence 
buried with his dirt and his vermin. And even our own 
Puritan fathers, although they had much about them that 
was worthy, had also much that was hard and even inhuman. 
You all know the pharasaic pride, the rudeness, and the 
boorishness which come to characterize the man or woman 



32 2 Human Conduct 

who thus cultivates indifference to affairs about him. His 
goal is hoggishness, just as much as is the goal of the most 
licentiate pleasure seeker. Only the latter assimilates him- 
self to the hog as he revels in the swill, while the former is 
his partner as he wallows in the mud. But surely neither 
in the swill nor in the mud is manhood to be found. 

Independence of society as ideal. — The other form of 
self-sufficiency is sought in independence of one's fellows 
and of social conventions. In praising self-reliance Emerson 
complains : 

Society is everywhere in conspiracy against the manhood of 
every one of its members. Society is a joint stock company, in 
which the members agree, for the better assuring of his bread to 
each shareholder, to surrender the Hberty and the culture of the 
eater. The wtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance 
is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and 
customs. 

Now every man through whom there throbs the pulse 
of vigorous life is at times tempted to feel that way. Social 
customs seem so dead. They so often weigh down wdth 
apparent injustice upon the dearest wishes of men. Socrates 
was executed by his city for teaching what we know was 
wholesome truth. George Eliot was prevented by a legal 
technicality from marrying the man whose love inspired her 
to write her great novels. The health laws, the marriage 
laws and customs, the police regulations, although on the 
whole good, often work harm in individual cases. In con- 
sequence, impetuous men often develop a certain hostile 
attitude toward these artificial restraints. Life, they feel, 
should be first. To be strong a man should be unfettered 
by any restraint which others set up. He should neither 
take favors from his fellows, nor feel constrained to give 
favors in return. Let him live the life of the mighty man. 
Let him be a fighter. Let him look after himself and let 
others beware. Let him stamp hi§ foot upon this organic 



Independence 323 

zation of his weaker brethren, formed to hold his impulses 
in check, which is called the state. Let him be beyond 
custom, beyond law, beyond even pity and generosity. Or- 
ganized society is all right for the weaklings who can not care 
for themselves, but ^' only for the superfluous the state was 
created, '^ — not for the man of vigorous, courageous, inde- 
pendent spirit. 

Pervasiveness of this ideal. — This search for strength 
in defiance of authority begins extremely early in life. One 
can find evidences of it even in infancy. Certainly in the 
early school years a child begins to feel proud of himself for 
having ^^ put one over on the teacher,'^ and his schoolmates 
are not unlikely at least to secretly admire his daring. 
One of the cleanest and most substantial high school students 
of my acquaintance recently remarked to a friend of mine, 
'^ I don't care if they call me rummy, but if anybody calls 
me sissy, I'm ready to fight." And I have no doubt that a 
vast majority of young people feel just that way. They 
are desperately afraid — and rightly so — of being molly- 
coddles, and they see no alternative to this except to be a 
mischief maker. ^^ Stolen sweets " have always been most 
attractive. Young people nearly always first drink, or 
smoke, or gamble, not because they like it, but because of 
the delight they experience in doing what is unconventional. 
Men who, after a period of hard work, deliberately go on a 
debauch do so not so much because they care for the drink, 
still less because they prize being drunk, as because of the 
grim pleasure which they feel in defying the responsibilities 
of the old routine work-a-day world. The vulgar vaude- 
ville draws its crowds not only because people love the vulgar 
for itself, but because attendance at it is a cheap way of 
being wicked. There is probably no one who has felt the 
throb of healthy life who has not often experienced the keen 
sense of delight which comes to one as, half fearful lest per- 
sons whom he knows should see him yet half hopeful that 
they may, he indulges in some forbidden lark. 



324 Human Conduct 

This philosophy of independence and of antagonism to all 
external authority two noted modern writers have developed 
into a system : — Friedrich Nietzsche, with his doctrine of 
the ^' Beyond-man " ; and Bernard Shaw, with his doctrine 
of the ^^ Super-man/^ Must we not agree with them? 
Must we not admit that the strength which we are seeking 
for the red-blooded man is to be found here ? 

Legitimacy of this ideal. — Motive good. — Well, in the 
first place, we must confess that its motive is good. It 
wishes to preserve the self in the face of forces which seek 
to annihilate it. You know that the routine of daily work, 
the constant disappointments which come to every man, 
and social pressure from every side, tend to crush out all 
individuality. Everything draws toward a single dead 
level. And the mass of men allow themselves gradually 
to drift into this dull uniformity, and become mere ma- 
chines. After a little while their hopes and their ambitions 
fade away, and they are contented to live in the small way 
of the mediocre man. Against this force the philosophy 
in question squarely sets itself. It urges a man to keep alive 
his independence by exercising it. Whether by antagonizing 
society is the only way of exercising, and thus cultivating, 
individuality is indeed another question, but that it is desir- 
able to keep men from sinking to the level of mere docile 
machines seems clear. 

Life above conventions. — It is right too in urging that 
life should be placed above conventions. You recall Christ's 
criticism of the Scribes and Pharisees. It was called forth 
by their subservience to the letter of the law instead of its 
spirit. And just this is always the drift among small men. 
They become slaves to established institutions, interpreted 
in the narrowest sense. Against this slavery to forms at 
the cost of fresh and vigorous life every great prophet sets 
himself. Our philosophers of individualism, in this respect, 
seem to be among the true prophets. Their call to us to 



Independence 325 

stand ready to break with outworn custom is surely a healthy 
call. Whether this involves that we shall break with all 
forms of order or merely give up the old for better ones is, 
however, again another question. 

Heroism. — And, in the third place, we must admire the 
daring of the independent self. There is certainly nothing 
flabby or timid about it. In his book, ''Beyond Good and 
Evil," Nietzsche speaks truly when he says: 

It is the business of very few to be independent ; it is the privi- 
lege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even with the best 
right, but without being obliged to do so, proves that he is not only 
probably strong but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a 
labyrinth, he multiplies a thousand fold the dangers which life in 
itself already brings with it ; not the least of which is that no one 
can see how or where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn 
piecemeal by some monitor of conscience. Supposing such a 
one comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension of men that 
they neither feel it, nor sympathize with it. And he can not any 
longer go back. He can not even go back to the sympathy of 
men. 

Hughes expresses the attitude of all virile men when he 
writes in '' Tom Brown^s School Days'^ : 

After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to 
know? From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, 
is the business, the real, highest, honestest business of every son of 
man. 

Every one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be 
beaten, be they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual 
wickedness in high places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians, or Bill, 
Tom, or Harry, who will not let him live his life in quiet till he has 
thrashed him. 

It is no good for Quakers, or any other body of men, to uplift 
their voices against fighting. Human nature is too strong for 
them, and they don't follow their own precepts. Every soul of 
them is doing his own piece of fighting, somehow and somewhere. 
The world might be a better world without fighting, for anything 
I know, but it wouldn't be our world; and therefore I am dead 
against crying peace when there is no peace, and isn't meant to be. 
I am as sorry as any man to see folks fighting the wrong people 



326 Human Conduct 

and wrong things, but I'd a deal sooner see them doing that than 
that they should have no fight in them. 

Inadequacy of the ideal. — All interdependent, — But 
after all, when we come to look more closely at this, can it 
really succeed as a policy of life, or is it another of those 
efforts which prove to defeat themselves when actually car- 
ried out ? Can a man be independent of his fellows and yet 
be strong? The more you look into the matter the more 
clearly, I think, you will find that he can not. We are all 
interdependent and the moment one cuts himself off from 
the cooperation of his fellows he becomes as impotent as 
one of the lower animals. Unless I used the results of the 
labor of my fellows I should be obliged to forego all the 
luxuries of my home. My carpets, the pictures on my 
walls, my stoves, my dishes, are all made for me by others. 
For the articles on my dinner table I must rely upon co- 
laborers all over the world. For the mining and coining of 
the metal in my money, for my books, for my newspapers, 

— in fact for everything that I have which puts my life 
on a higher plane than that of the lower animals — I am 
dependent on social cooperation. If I trace out but a single 
element that enters into my life — say the ring on my finger 

— I find that it alone has brought to my service some hun- 
dreds, or even thousands of men. It has necessitated not 
only goldsmiths, who mold and polish it, but miners, trans- 
portation agencies, — such as railroads, telegraph and tele- 
phone systems, mail service, etc. — makers of machinery, 
carpenters who have built factories in which these worked, 
architects who have designed them, and countless others. 
In fact each element involved always leads on to others 
and this to others — as, for example, the molding machines 
or tools lead on to the machines which made them, these to 
the miners who dig the iron and the coal for the making of 
the machines, these to the merchants who provide the miners 
with their food, their clothing, and their houses, etc., — 



Independence 327 

until the simplest thing proves to depend in some way upon 
almost every worker in the world. We do not and can not 
work alone. We are all bound up into one organic whole 
which includes within its comprehensive embrace all levels 
of society, all parts of the globe, and indeed all ages of history. 
Bancroft says : 

The world of mankind does not exist in fragments, nor can 
a country have an insulated existence. All men are brothers, 
and aJl are bondsmen for one another. 

All nations, too, are brothers, and each is responsible for that 
federative humanity which puts the ban of exclusion on none. 
New principles of government could not assert themselves in one 
hemisphere without affecting the other. The very idea of the 
progress of an individual people, in its relation to universal history, 
springs from the acknowledged unity of the race. . . . 

No period of time has a separate being. We are cheered by rays 
from former centuries, and live in the sunny reflection of all their 
light. What though thought is invisible, and even when effective 
seems as transient as the wind that raised the cloud? It is yet free 
and indestructible ; can as little be bound in chains as the aspiring 
flame ; and when once generated, takes eternity for its guardian. 

We are the children and heirs of the past, with which, as with 
the future, we are indissolubly linked together; and he that truly 
has sympathy with everything belonging to man will with his 
toils for posterity blend affection for the times that are gone by, 
and seek to live in the vast life of the ages. 

Search for independence self-defeating, — And because 
men are thus, in the nature of things, inextricably inter- 
connected, the individualist's search for strength in the 
direction of independence is a self-defeating one. In its 
very nature it is self -contradictory and destined to miserable 
failure. For look at the plight of our philosopher of inde- 
pendence as he tries to live out his doctrine. In every word 
that he utters in defense of his philosophy he refutes him- 
self. For he can not proclaim his individualism without 
making use of instruments which are the product of that 
very organized social order against which he rails. His 



328 Human Conduct 

speech betrays him, for his language is a social product. 
The means by which he is transported from place to place 
to propagate his doctrine are the result of social cooperation. 
For the devices by which he announces his lecture he is de- 
pendent upon his fellows. Or if he choose to write instead 
of to speak he is no less dependent upon society. His paper 
is made by machinery which many men have built. His 
books must be printed by such machinery, and advertised 
and distributed by means which inevitably involve his 
dependence upon his fellows. Or, if he choose not to speak 
of his doctrine but to exemphfy it in conduct, there too his 
coveted strength turns out to be ludicrous weakness. His 
gesticulations may be as fierce as the grimaces of an angry 
lion, but when he begins to act — without tools, without 
guidance by any race experience — his boasted power turns 
out somewhat as ^^ the mountain that labored and brought 
forth a mouse." 

There is, indeed, only one kind of man who can succeed 
by putting himself absolutel}^ out of alignment with intellec- 
tual and social conventions and can live, to his own satis- 
faction, according to his individual caprice — the moAman. 
In one of Ibsen's great dramas Peer Gynt is inquiring, from 
the champions of various methods, how best to be one's self. 
He comes at last to Begriffenfeldt, champion of insanity, 
who praises to him madness in the following encomium : 

'Tis here, sir, that one is oneself with a vengeance ; 

Oneself and nothing whatever besides. 

We go full sail as our very selves. 

Each one shuts himself up in the barrel of self, 

In the self -fermentation he dives to the bottom — 

With the self -being he seals it hermetically, 

And seasons the staves in the well of self. 

No one has tears for the other's woes ; 

No one has mind for the other's ideas. 

We're our very selves both in thought and tone. 

Our selves to the spring board's uttermost verge. 



Independence 329 

Defying convention a mark of sense of weakness. — As a 
matter of fact this effort to show one's strength by setting 
oneself against one's fellows, and by defying convention, is 
at basis the outcome of a lurking sense of weakness. Men 
who have learned to read human nature can see readily 
enough through that mask. The Inspector of High Schools 
in Illinois, speaking to teachers, says on this point : 

A boy or girl assumes the attitude of a real tough, for instance, 
not because inherently so, but because of a desire to appear courage- 
ous, or careless, where really timidity or sensitiveness is the root 
of the trouble. Often an otherwise good boy, but oversensitive 
of being reminded of the fact, and especially of being singled out 
before his comrades as an example of goodness, resents the action 
by proceeding to demonstrate the contrary. 

One often assumes a brazen attitude in the same spirit in 
which one whistles to keep up courage. The most extrava- 
gant of individualists, Nietzsche, was in person the very 
opposite of his philosophy. He was raised among women, 
was effeminate in manner, foppish in dress, gentle in de- 
meanor, and feeble in body, and there is no doubt that his 
ferocious philosophy was the bullying of a weakling striving 
to cover up his impotence. But the strong man is not 
tempted to take this ^^ bully '' attitude. He knows his 
strength without continually trying it out. In consequence 
he can stand in the midst of his work and maintain his poise. 
He can, in his sense of strength, remain, as President Wilson 
once said of our nation, '^ too proud to fight '' ; and, confi- 
dent of his ability to take the necessary care of himself, he 
can turn away from the sickly chatter about his own rights 
— so characteristic of young people — and plunge whole- 
heartedly into his obligations. 

Give as well as take. — And so a person is inevitably linked 
with his fellows. Whatever society achieves reacts to his 
advantage. He enjoys the public streets, the removal of 
sewage, the results of inventions, the protection of govern- 



330 Human Conduct 

ment. If, then, he insists upon being indifferent to society, 
the indifference can be only a one-sided one. Society will 
not be indifferent to him. It can not be. In spite of his 
wish to be independent, it will be continually helping him. 
And if he accepts this inevitable assistance from society 
and does not give in return, he is a sponge. If he takes his 
fun in opposing society, he is ungratefully turning upon his 
benefactor. Surely that is not the way of the red-blooded 
man. Besides it is an unnecessary form of ingratitude, 
for all that the independent self is seeking can be found 
legitimately elsewhere. It is possible to be a virile student 
and yet not be a mischief maker. It is possible to cultivate 
strong individuality and initiative and yet work in coopera- 
tion wdth society. How, we shall later see. But that the 
strong man owes something to society, since he receives 
something from it, and that he who is truly virile will not 
run away from this obligation, seems clear. 

I live for those who love me, 
Whose hearts are kind and true ; 
For the heaven that smiles above me, 
And awaits my spirit too ; 
For all human ties that bind me, 
For the task by God assigned me, 
For the hopes not left behind me, 
And the good that I can do. 

I live to learn their story 
Who've suffered for my sake ; 
To emulate their glory, 
And follow in their wake ; 
Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages, 
The noble of all ages. 
Whose deeds crown history's pages 
And time's great volumes make. 



I live for those who love me. 
For those who know me true ; 



Independence 331 

For the heaven that smiles above me, 
And awaits my spirit too ; 
For the cause that lacks assistance, 
For the wrong that needs resistance. 
For the future in the distance, 
And the good that I can do. 

**Not to myself alone," 
The little opening flower transported cries — 
** Not to myself alone I bud and bloom. 
With fragrant breath the breezes I perfume. 
And gladden all things with my rainbow dyes. 
The bee comes sipping every eventide 

His dainty fill ; 
The butterfly within my cup doth hide 
From threatening ill.** 

"Not to myself alone,'* 
The circling star with honest pride doth boast — 
" Not to myself alone I rise and set ; 
I write upon night's coronal of jet 
His power and skill who formed our countless host ; 
A friendly beacon at heaven's open gate, 

I gem the sky, 
That man may ne'er forget, in every fate. 
His home on high." 

"Not to myself alone," 
The honey-laden bee doth murmuring hum — 
** Not to myself alone from flower to flower 
I roam the wood, the garden, and the bower. 
And to the hive at evening weary come ; 
For man, for man the luscious food I pile 

With busy care, 
Content if he repay my ceaseless toil 
With scanty share." 

"Not to myself alone," 
The soaring bird with lusty pinion sings — 

**Not to myself alone I raise my song; 

I cheer the drooping with my warbling tongue, 
And bear the mourner on my viewless wings ; 



332 Human Conduct 

I bid the hymnless churl my anthem learn, 

And God adore ; 
I call the worldling from his dross to turn, 

And sing and soar.'* 

"Not to myself alone," 
The streamlet whispers on its pebbly way — 
**Not to myself alone I sparkling glide; 
I scatter health and life on every side, 
And strew the fields with herb and floweret gay. 
I sing unto the common bleak and bare 

My gladsome tune ; 
I sweeten and refresh the languid air 
In doughty June.'* 

"Not to myself alone," 
O man, forget not thou, earth's honored priest — 
Its tongue, its soul, its Hfe, its pulse, its heart — 
In earth's great chorus to sustain thy part ; 
Chief est of guests at love's ungrudging feast. 
Play not the niggard ; spurn thy native clod, 

And self disown ; 
Live to thy neighbor, live unto thy God, — 
Not to thyself alone ! 

EXERCISES 

1. Mention some of the ways in which one must practice self- 
denial in order to attain success in, say, acting or writing. 

2. Have you met the type of person who is brutally frank — 
who always says just what he thinks? Is this, or is it not, a com- 
mendable trait? 

3. Professor James advises: "Be systematically ascetic or 
heroic in little unnecessary points ; do every day or two something 
for no other reason than that you would rather not do it." Is 
that negative sort of discipline the best way in which to train the 
will? Outline a positive method which you believe to be better. 

4. Is it true that society is so organized as to tend continually 
to crush out one's individuality? Is it, do you think, to protect 
their individuality that men often assert themselves when they 
have apparently nothing to gain by such assertion? Why are we 
so sensitive about having our rights trodden upon? .- 



Independence 333 

5. Is **closemouthedness" a mark of strength? How does it 
manifest the spirit of independence? 

6. Who is most sensitive about his rights, the man who feels 
perfectly secure in them, or he who feels that his ability to defend 
them is weak? Is autocratic and unnecessary insistence upon 
one's rights a mark of strength or of weakness? 

7. Do you see any other way of cultivating individuality ex- 
cept through opposing authority and conventions? 

8. Why may a man not say it is none of his business what be- 
comes of society? Does this necessitate that one shall make 
sacrifices to give to society the benefit of any insight which he may 
have? But may not this be meddlesomeness, especially if society 
is reluctant to hear and to accept his message? 

9. What was Nietzsche's conception of the " beyond-man " ? 
Shaw's of the "super-man"? Do you hope that the evolution of 
society will produce this man? Do you fear lest it will? Why? 

10. Does the text overemphasize the interdependence of men? 
Defend your statement. 



CHAPTER XXII 
THE STRONG SELF — THE POPULAR HERO 

The preceding chapter closed with the conclusion that the 
strong life can not be antisocial, nor even unsocial. We must 
work with our fellows. Turn where we will we can not escape 
them. Everywhere we are dependent upon them and they 
upon us. Whatever be the way to strength it must at least 
run through the vineyard of service with our fellows. We are 
inevitably social animals, and are destined to realize all that 
we are capable of becoming only in society. Any plan of 
life for the strong man must, therefore, set him in relations 
of cooperation with his fellows. 

Prestige in group leadership. — In an earlier chapter v/e 
noticed how all creatures tend to struggle for domination in 
their group. Each wishes to be first if he feels that he has 
any chance of being such. Even the lower animals fight 
for the leadership when admitted to any new herd. Students 
who rank high in their classes are almost sure to be caught in 
the craze to be first in their class. Boys want athletic or 
club offices, especially if there is competition for them. 
Men often spend their fortunes, or even compromise their 
honor, to get political positions. Certainly the ambition 
to be a popular leader is a deeply seated and widely preva- 
lent one. Ruskin says : 

The seaman does not commonly desire to be made captain 
only because he knows he can manage the ship better than any 
other sailor on board ; he wants to be made captain that he may 
be called captain. The clergyman does not usually want to be 

334 



The Popular Hero 335 

made a bishop because he believes that no other hand can, as firmly 
as his, direct the diocese through its difficulties ; he wants to be 
made bishop primarily that he may be called " My Lord." And a 
prince does not usually desire to enlarge, or a subject to gain, a 
kingdom because he believes that no one else can as well serve the 
state upon its throne, but briefly, because he wishes to be ad- 
dressed as ''Your Majesty" by as many lips as may be brought to 
such utterance. 

Popular adoration of the leader. — That the rest of us are 
dazzled by the position of the leader we clearly show. As 
soon as a man is elected to a position of superiority he com- 
mands a new type of respect. The margin by which he was 
chosen may have been a very narrow one, and during the 
contest others may have seemed as favored competitors 
as he, but as soon as the choice is made all other candidates 
sink to the common level while he is made, by his position, 
to stand out head and shoulders above them. The election 
of a presiding officer for an assembly, the selection of a 
president for a nation, and especially the choice of a pope 
for the Catholic Church, illustrate the prestige that is 
attached to positions of leadership. 

Indeed in the popular fancy every one except the leader is 
likely to be overlooked. A battle is credited to the general, 
although it was his soldiers who did the hard fighting, and 
probably his staff that did most of the planning. A bit 
of engineering work is credited to its head engineer, though 
he by no means did it alone. A reform is credited to some 
conspicuous leader, as the Reformation is to Luther, although 
he only gave expression to what great masses of men were 
feeling and even sacrificing themselves for. In fact until 
very recently history was written chiefiy as the biography 
of its great men — its generals, its kings, its prime ministers, 
its inventors, — neglecting entirely the great masses of men 
whose service buoyed these up. We are beginning to see 
that history is made by the movements of its common people, 
and are coming to write history accordingly; but the dis- 



336 Human Conduct 

position still persists to hold in reverence the group leader, 
and to do him honor as a superior sort of creature. 

Legitimacy of leadership as ideal. — Now can we find the 
strength we are seeking in this sort of leadership? Will the 
strong man make it the policy of his life to be a popular hero ? 
Can he gain the power which will make his life significant 
in the world and a satisfaction to himself by struggling to 
keep continually in command of some group of his fellows ? 

Gives scope for social instinct. — Like most ideals which 
have taken hold of large numbers of men as this one has, 
there is something to say in justification of it. In the first 
place such a policy of life gives scope for the exercise of the 
social functions. It does not violate that basic trait of 
human nature which Aristotle had in mind when he called 
man a political animal. It gives room for the employment 
of such fundamental social instincts as emulation and vanity 
and the like, and for making use of the advantages which 
come with civilization — that is, the possibility of social 
cooperation. In this it avoids both the emptiness of the man 
who seeks to be indifferent to his surroundings and the self- 
contradictoriness of him who defies his fellows as creatures of 
whom he need take no account. 

World needs heroes. — Again it must be said that the world 
needs heroes — and has them everywhere — some actually 
living, some historical, some purely ideal. Every child 
has his own hero. There is some one to whom he looks and 
like whom, in his own childish way, he is ambitious to become. 
This may be some aggressive business man of the town, or his 
school-teacher, or even the village bully. Or it may be a 
character in history or in literature. But some concrete 
hero to whom he can look he will have. Of this instinct the 
Spartans in their day made wise use educationally. Each 
boy had his ^^ inspirer '^ among the men, and each girl among 
the matrons. The inspirer cultivated the confidence of the 
youth, and to the inspirer the youth gave his best loyalty, 



The Popular Hero 337 

so that between them there grew up the tenderest of all 
possible relations. Even grown-ups have their heroes — 
and heroes of very diverse types — persons to whom they look 
for guidance, and whom they imitate even in the details of 
their conduct, often quite unknown to those imitated. 

These heroes solve for us the problems of life. They rep- 
resent our ideal embodied in concrete form, so that when we 
wish to know how to act we ask, What would our hero do ? 
If, for example, we wish to know what is American we do not 
consult the history and the traditions of the nation, but we 
ask : What would Lincoln think ? If we wish to know 
what is Christian we ask: What would Jesus do? These 
give to us a material embodiment of that which we seek, 
and our doubts are forthwith set at rest. Thus everywhere 
our heroes give to us, as we could not possibly get it else- 
where, a concrete solution to our ethical problems and en- 
able us thereby to plunge confidently into life. 

Weakness of this ideal. — Abortive for society, — This 
embodiment of our cause in a leader is, then, a genuine 
necessity in the world. But, on the other hand, if a man is 
really rightly to meet this need, must he not be something 
more than a popular hero? Must not his leadership have 
come, as we saw a little while ago that his pleasure must, 
merely by the way? Must he not, altogether regardless 
of his personal interests, first have plunged wholeheartedly 
into the cause for which he is later chosen leader? When 
leadership comes to the true man, does it not come often as a 
matter of surprise ? I think so. You remember this was 
true in the case of Washington. He was extremely reluctant 
to take command of the Continental armies, and again to 
assume the presidency. Especially in the former case he 
protested his unfitness, but the office was urged upon him. 
And when he undertook it, he did so not out of his ambition 
but for the welfare of the cause. So it must be with every 
true leader. He must sum up and give expression to the 



338 Human Conduct 

ideals of those whom he leads. When they look to him they 
look, not to an individual, but to their cause personii&ed. 
When he ceases thus to stand to them for their cause, he can 
be no longer their hero. He may, by superior force or diplo- 
macy, retain them in his clutches, but in so doing he is a 
tyrant and not a hero. To a private individual, such as he 
then becomes, they do not owe, nor will they intentionally 
give, allegiance. For society the hero has failed in so far 
as he is interested merely in being a hero. 

Self-defeating for individual. — But if this policy of life is 
inadequate from the standpoint of societ}^, it is much more so 
from that of the would-be hero. His success at best is fitful 
and uncertain. His failure has been the theme of story and 
song from the dawn of history. No novel could close more 
auspiciously, for the ordinary reader, than with the utter 
ruin of such reputation-seeker whose only ambition is to 
keep in the limelight. As in one^s search for pleasure, his 
very effort makes his success more difficult. For somehow 
his selfishness shines through and repels men from him. 
About him who is seeking honor for himself there is a 
certain artificiality which the keen sense of the loyal can 
not help detecting and being disgusted with. 

Success transient. And, in another way, the would-be 
hero courts an uncertain fate. When one's relation to life 
is normal, what he accomplishes lives after him. He has 
left foundations upon which other men can build. The good 
pastor of a church, for example, thinks of his successor and 
of the future of his church, and acts in such a way as best to 
subserve the interests of his institution in the long run, not 
merely to bleed it for the present. Indeed, even if such a one 
completely fails of results that can be measured, his life 
still has counted, for his spirit of service inspires his followers. 
His very failure, if he has faithfully worked, may be his 
greatest success. For many a loyal man has accomplished 
in his death that which in his life he could not possibly have 



The Popular Hero 339 

accomplished. Thus the martyrs of all ages have in their 
death given life to the world. Christianity clusters about 
the cross of Christ, and philosophy received its greatest 
impetus from the martyrdom of the great Athenian, Socrates. 
But it is not so with the popular hero. What he gains is 
transient. His cause is lost when he is lost, for he and that 
cause are one. Thus he is continually dependent upon 
external success. As long as he can keep the reins in his 
hands he may command the homage of the crowd, but when 
he loses his grip on these reins he is inevitably dashed to 
pieces. Against such fallen hero men turn with a bitterness 
commensurate with their former devotion and rend him to 
pieces. Truly his position is at best precarious. 

Policy of a drifter. — And, finally, this policy turns out, 
like so many of our former ones, to be that of the drifter 
and not of the fighter. And so it proves the way to weakness 
and not the way to strength. For to remain a popular hero 
one must keep in with the crowd. When the mob changes 
mood, the would-be leader must change with them. He 
must be continually feeling the public pulse and adjusting 
himself to the story which that pulse tells. If he at times 
takes on the appearance of determination, it is only for show. 
If his policy is first of all to be the popular hero, he can have 
no intention to lash his followers into line. He can have no 
mind of his own. He can do no more than reflect the will of 
others, — a very unstable and even whimsical will, as every 
student of the crowd well knows. 

But if one is to be strong surely he can not be thus a 
weathercock, turning around each time the wind changes. 
He must face constantly his own goal. Things must revolve 
around his will, not his will pliably adapt itself to circum- 
stances, where doing so involves compromising himself. To 
him it must be a matter of indifference whether the majority 
pull with him or not. He must stand up in his own strength 
and dare to follow his convictions. The crowd may choose 



340 Human Conduct 

him leader if they will, but if he makes it his aim to court 
such choice, he can do so only at the cost of sacrificing the 
strength in which as a man he prides himself. 

In no place in the world has individual character more weight 
than at a public school. Remember this, I beseech you, all you 
boys who are getting into the upper forms. Now is the time in 
all your lives probably when you may have more wide influence 
for good or evil on the society you live in than you ever can have 
again. Quit yourselves like men, then, speak up, and strike out, 
if necessary, for whatsoever is manly, and lovely, and of good re- 
port; never try to be popular, but only to do your duty and help 
others to do theirs, and you may leave the tone of feeling in the 
school higher than you found it, and so be doing good, which no 
living soul can measure, to generations of your countrymen yet 
unborn. For boys follow one another in herds like sheep, for 
good or evil ; they hate thinking, and have rarely any settled prin- 
ciples. ... It is the leading boys for the time being who give 
the tone to all the rest, and make the school either a noble institu- 
tion for the training of Christian Englishmen, or a place where a 
young boy will get more evil than he would if he were turned out 
to make his way in London streets, or anything between these two 
extremes.! 

EXERCISES 

1. Why, have you observed, do persons mostly want office? 
Is this, or is it not, a laudable ambition? 

2. Can one ever do as much for his group out of office as in it? 
More? Why? Give examples? 

3. Do you ever decide how to act by observing some one whom 
you admire and do as he does ? Do you believe that any one is 
thus looking to you as his hero? What responsibility does that 
involve ? 

4. Is it, or is it not, true that the popularity seeker defeats 
himself in the long run? Defend your attitude. 

5. How much permanent good did Napoleon do for Europe? 
How might he have done more? 

6. Dr. Sun, who might have been first President of the Chinese 
Republic, voluntarily gave way to another who, it appeared, could 
better unite all the factions. Huerta clung to the presidency of 

1 Hughes : Tom Brown's School Days, 



The Popular Hero 341 

Mexico when his presence caused prolonged civil war. Which 
was the stronger man? Can you cite, from your own experience, 
analogous cases in minor offices? 

7. To what extent does tact demand that one keep with the 
majority? To what extent does strength permit it? 

8. History once dealt chiefly with kings, presidents, and gen- 
erals. Of late it is being rewritten from the standpoint of mass 
movements. Why the change? 

9. How do the people of the British Empire regard their king ? 



CHAPTER XXIII 
THE STRONG SELF— ONE^S LIFE IN HIS WORK 

Objective interest essential for strength. - — We have now 
surveyed six modes of seeking strength. We have in- 
vestigated their credentials, and found them all possessed of 
certain legitimate features. But, on the other hand, we 
have found in each fatal defects. Indeed, when pressed 
hard, they were all found self-defeating. As the chief plan 
of life each of them proved to contradict itself when given 
the reins. To seek directly neither show, nor pleasure, 
nor selfish success, nor indifference to fortune, nor independ- 
ence of society, nor popular leadership, is the best w^ay to win 
them. Like the end of the rainbow, which as children we 
tried to overtake, they persist in eluding him who makes it 
his concern to pursue them. And the chase for them results 
not in virility and richness of life, but in flabbiness and 
poverty of spirit. 

And the central reason for this is not far to seek. It 
lies in the fact that one^s interest here is directed inward 
instead of outward. Engaged in the pursuits discussed 
above one is continually feeling his own pulse. He is like 
the child who, in learning to walk, continually watches his 
own feet ; like the speaker who is always aware of the gestures 
he is making ; or like the man who, in conversation, is perpet- 
ually thinking of the correctness of his language or of his 
personal mannerisms ; or like the person who attempts to 
be polished by consciously putting into practice memorized 
rules of etiquette. About such a one there is always a certain 
artificiality which is almost sure to defeat his own ends. His 

342 



One^s Life in His Work 343 

conduct is flabby and awkward, and the secret of its flabbiness 
is just the fact that his attention is turned so largely inward 
upon himself. 

If one would be really forceful one^s interest must be 
objective. One must forget oneself. If he is to succeed, 
he must strive after some objective end. He must lose 
sight temporarily both of the means and of the secondary 
consequences of his act, and plunge toward his specific 
goal. If he is learning to walk, he will do best to fasten his 
eye upon the point which he wishes to reach, and let his 
feet take care of themselves. To leap a chasm he must 
direct his attention to the place where he intends to land. 
To bat the ball he must forget ball and bat and grandstand, 
and think only of the spot in the field to which he intends to 
send the missile. To be genuinely courteous he must turn 
aside from rules and put his heart into making others happy. 
To make a great speech he must lose consciousness of his 
voice, his gestures, and the polish of his language, and throw 
his soul into his message. Surely ^^ Whosoever will save his 
life shall lose it ; and whosoever will lose his life . . . shall 
find it.'^ 

Work as organizing principle. — In the group. — How 
important as an organizing principle devotion to a piece of 
work is, a glance at group psychology will illustrate. Every 
one knows that if a church is to be kept alive it must be put 
to work. A political party can be held together only so long 
as it has a vital mission to perform, at least in the opinion 
of its devotees. When it is no longer called upon to accom- 
plish a work worth while its unity will first loosen and then, 
by more or less rapid degrees, it will inevitably disintegrate. 
Every party that has long persisted has done so because 
it has, at every important turning, sought new principles 
worth fighting for. Take away the necessity of struggling 
for a specific end and it can no longer maintain itself. The 
same is true of any committee. With hard work to do, it 



344 Human Conduct 

will develop a high degree of solidarity and of forcefulness, 
but, when its work is done, no amount of mere sentiment 
can suffice to prevent its weakening and ultimately dis- 
integrating. Thus the group is made by its work. Its 
integrity centers about the performance of a function. 

In the individual. — And just so it is with a single individual. 
As long as devotion to no one mission has gripped him, his 
life is scattered and inconsequential. He flits lightly from 
one thing to another. He drifts easily along, like a cloud of 
vapor which the light breezes bear leisurely on. But, let 
him once seriously betake himself to some definite line of 
work, and immediately a new forcefulness manifests itself in 
his conduct. He is no longer like the cloud of vapor which 
moves with the breezes, but like the hissing jet of steam that 
emerges under the high pressure of its boiler. His work 
becomes a center about which all of his powers are organized. 
Around it all of the mathematics, and physics, and practical 
observations, and everything else that he has learned, come 
to be grouped. And, in consequence, his life is no longer 
scattered, flabby, and meaningless, but organized, forceful, 
and significant. Says Schiller, 

Spread out the thunder into single tones, and it becomes a lullaby 
for children ; but pour it out in one quick peal and the royal sound 
shall shake the heavens. 

Just such is the contrast between the man who has throv/n 
himself into his work and him who has not. 

It is often said that if you want a bit of work done, always 
take it to the person who is already busy. Despite his rush 
he is more sure to do it than the man who is idle. One does 
one's best under pressure. You have doubtless noticed 
how little 3^ou can accomplish during vacation. There is 
no central core around which your life revolves at such 
time. In consequence, you find yourself extremely indolent. 
You often seem benumbed. You can dream, but as for 



One's Life in His Work 345 

accomplishing anything worth while, that is a difficult 
matter. To do a task strongly it seems almost necessary to 
postpone it until you get back the forcefulness which comes 
from plunging again into your work. 

It is unnecessary to enlarge here upon the premium which 
nature has put upon working, and the penalty which she has 
imposed upon idleness. You well know the physical brawn 
which the laborer possesses, and the pallor of inactivity. You 
know the habitual contentedness of the healthy worker, and 
the ennui of the idle. There is not in the world a more un- | 
happy class of people than those who have nothing to do. \^ 
You know, too, how rapidly an old man decays when he 
once gives up his active life and merely sits by and waits for 
death. 

In intellectual achievement. — You can see, too, that on the 
intellectual side devotion to a specific line of work makes for 
strength. One can never become a scholar merely by reading 
or_Qth erwise ab sorbing. He may pick up a great deal of 
miscellaneous information, but this remains unorganized 
and comparatively valueless. But when he brings this cul- 
ture to focus upon a line of inquiry of his own it takes on 
vitality. He then has a center around which to organize it. 
Without such creative attitude in some specific direction, he 
may be brilliant and polished but he can never be a power 
in the world. ^' Coleridge,'^ wrote Charles Lamb to a 
friend, ^^ is dead and is said to have left behind him above 
forty thousand treatises on metaphysics and divinity — 
not one of them complete.' ' And because he did not plunge 
into any single line of work and stay by that he failed to 
leave the strong impress upon the world which he might 
have left. 

In morality. — On the moral side it is equally true that it is 
work that makes the man. Professor James has urged us \ 
^' Never to suffer one's self to have an emotion at a concert, 
without expressing it afterwards in some active way/' To \ 



346 Human Conduct 

experience moral emotions and not to express them in the 
conduct to which they point is worse than useless. A young 
lady was stranded in Chicago. She went, as a last resort, 
to a minister who was then preaching eloquent sermons on 
applied Christianity and laid her case before him. He 
received her coldly. When desperately pressed he mechani- 
cally reported her case by telephone to a wealthy lady 
'^ deeply interested in social problems. '^ This benign matron 
took sufficient time from the writing of her papers on the 
Beauty of Charity to express her regret. She ^^ thought it 
too bad,^' ^^ hoped she would come out all right,'' etc., but 
never lifted a finger to help her on her feet. About such 
'^ interest " in social welfare there is certainly a contemptible 
hypocrisy. Sympathy with one's fellows must show itself 
not in words but in deeds. Byron pictures the mildest of the 
prisoners of Chillon : 

With tears for naught but others' ills 

And then they flowed like mountain rills, 

Unless he could assuage the woe 
Which he abhorred to view below. 

Similarly, religion must exemplify itself in service, not in fine 
speeches and polished prayers ; patriotism must consist in 
an actual, concrete interest in the state's affairs, not in 
fourth of July orations ; and love must show itself in devotion, 
in self-sacrifice, in little attentions, not in eloquent protesta- 
tions. In all of these cases one must first of all serve, and 
the emotion, if it is genuine, must group itself about this 
service. The man who claims to love his state and yet does 
not gladly obey not only the letter but the spirit of its 
laws, and in every possible way promote its interests even 
to his own detriment, is a liar. So also the man who protests 
love for another, and yet is not unselfish in his dealings with 
that other, is making empty boasts. True love is declared 
by what it does. 



One^s Life in His Work 347 

There is in life no blessing like affection ; 
It soothes, it hallows, elevates, subdues. 
And bringeth down to earth its native heaven. 
It sits beside the cradle patient hours, 
Whose sole contentment is to watch and love ; 
It bends o'er the death bed, and conceals 
Its own despair with words of faith and hope. 

Work makes the man. — He then ^^ who is greatest among 
you must be servant of all." The strong man must be 
first of all a center at which work is going on. About this 
work his whole personality comes to revolve. In fact, as 
a person he is defined by his work. His very selfhood con- 
sists in the unitary plan of action that runs through his 
history. Without such unity of action he could be a thing, 
perhaps even a biological organism ; but not a self. A self 
must first of all do, and only afterwards, and in consequence, 
can it he. One^s life, as a person, is inevitably in his work. 
Only when one marks out for himself a definite plan of action 
which shall be his does he come to birth as a person. Only 
then does he take on individuality and moral significance. 

For when, indeed, do you know who a man is? Not when 
you know his name, for that is merely a superficial tag. If 
you know no more than that, he is to you just as a post that 
is marked on a chart — a classified object. Not when you 
know where he lives, for that tells little or nothing of what 
you may expect of him. Not when you know what he looks 
like, for that merely enables you to know when he is passing 
by. Before you really know the man you must know what 
he has accomplished in the world, what plan of action runs 
through his life, what he aims at, what he hopes and intends. 
It is here in his work that the significant part of his life 
consists. Until he has thus fastened down to some specific 
line of conduct he is more or less of a nonentity. But with 
his life focused upon a definite aim he acquires a significance 
and a momentum that makes him a creature to be taken 
account of. 



348 Human Conduct 

Successful Men Hard Workers, — Men who have left then* 
mark upon the world have been almost invariably men of 
hard and persistent work. 

*' Daniel Webster," said Sydney Smith, "struck me much hke 
a steam engine in trousers." "I know that he can toil terribly," 
said Cecil of Walter Raleigh, in explaining the latter' s success. 
Dr. J. W. Alexander exhorted young ministers, ''Live for your 
sermon — live in your sermon. Get some startling to cry Sermon, 
sermon, sermon." Charles James Fox became a great orator by 
"never letting an opportunity for speaking or self culture pass 
unimproved." Henry Clay could have been found almost daily 
for years in some old Virginia barn, declaiming to the cattle for 
an audience. "Never," he said, "let a day go by without exer- 
cising your power of speech." Beecher for years used to practice 
speaking in the woods and pastures. 

The nation which in all history we count most virile was a 
nation of workers — Rome. ' Laboremus ' (we must work) was 
the last word of the dying Emperor Severus, as his soldiers gathered 
around him. 'Labor,' 'achievement,' was the great Roman motto, 
and the secret of her conquest of the world. The greatest generals 
returned from their triumphs to the plough. . . . Rome was a 
mighty nation while industry led her people, but when her great 
conquest of wealth and slaves placed her citizens above the neces- 
sity of labor, that moment her glory began to fade ; vice and 
corruption, induced by idleness, doomed the proud city to an 
ignominious history.^ 

Need of definite purpose. — But it is not enough to work. 
The strong man is made not by work alone, but by work that 
centers about a single plan. He must not be the Jack of 
all trades. He must choose his mission in life and stick to it, 
leaving the rest of the world's work to others. Says Carlyle : 

The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on 
a single object, can accomplish something ; whereas the strongest, 
by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. 
The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the 
hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous up- 
roar and leaves no trace behind. 

1 Orison Swett Marden,, 



One^s Life in His Work 349 

Orison Swett Harden sets forth the need of a definite pur- 
pose in the following forceful passage : 

A definite purpose is like the sides of a cannon or barrel of a 
rifle, which gives aim and direction to ,the projectile. Without 
these barriers to concentrate the expanding powder, it would simply 
flash .without moving the ball. How many a miserable failure 
might have been a great triumph; how many dwarfs might have 
been giants ; how many a *'mute inglorious Milton" has died with 
all his music in him ; how many a scholar has sipped of many arts, 
but drank of none, from just this lack of a definite aim ! 

The mind is naturally a vagrant, prone to wander into all sorts 
of byways unless kept steadily and resolutely to its purpose. It 
was a great purpose which made Socrates indifferent to the hem- 
lock. A voice had spoken to his soul, and he obeyed it. It was 
irresistible. It was a great purpose which made Grant invincible, 
and enabled him to hammer away at the Confederacy, in spite of 
the armies and difficulties in front, and the criticism and opposition 
of the press behind him, until he had received Lee's sword at 
Appomattox. 

It is a great purpose that grinds into paint all the experiences, 
fag ends and waste of life, and makes everything available for the 
great canvas of our art, which otherwise would be dissipated and 
lost. 

To succeed to-day you must concentrate all the powers of your 
mind upon one definite goal, and have a tenacity of decision which 
means death or victory. Every other inclination which tempts 
you from this unswerving purpose must be repressed. 

Your purpose may not be very definite at first, but like a river 
which starts in a series of ill-defined pools or streams, if all your 
aims are in the right direction they will finally run together, and, 
swollen by hundreds of side rills, merge into a mighty stream of 
purpose and sweep you on to the ocean of success. A great pur- 
pose is cumulative ; and, Hke a great magnet, it attracts all that 
is kindred along the current of life. 

Strength in work. — If one would stand out, then, as a 
strong, virile man he must choose some definite part of the 
world^s work as his own and plunge wholeheartedly into it. 
Only such devotion to a work worth while will raise him 
above the trivialities of life. 



350 Human Conduct 

Every man needs the inspiration of a great mission to lift him 
above the pettiness and cheapness which are the bane of ordinary 
lives. Some great undertaking with an element of heroism and 
moral sublimity in it, the very contemplation of which quickens the 
blood and fires the soul and awakens an ever-present sense of the 
dignity and significance of life, — this is an essential condition of 
all great achievement. 

'Tis not for man to trifle : life is brief, 

And sin is here. 
Our age is but the falling of a leaf, 

A dropping tear. 
We have no time to sport away the hours ; 
All must be earnest in a world like ours. 

Not many lives, but only one have we ; 

One, only one. 
How sacred should that one life ever be — 
Day after day filled up with blessed toil. 
Hour after hour still bringing in new spoil ! 

EXERCISES 

1. Can one meditate too little in advance of action? Too 
much ? Why ? 

2. Do really good men think much about their motives? To 
what extent and why ought one study his motives? What is the 
effect of too much fingering of one's motives? 

3. In making a speech have you ever found that, although you 
seem to have nothing to say at the start, relevant thoughts will 
begin to come to you after you are once launched in your speech? 
Does the same thing happen when you sit down to ivTite or to study ? 
Do one's piu-poses in life analogously begin to take on definiteness 
and force only when one begins to act them out ? 

4. What is the relation of work to happiness ? 

5. Men who write books are usually scholarly in the particular 
field in which they Vvrrite. Do they write because they are scholars, 
or are they made scholars by their writing? 

6. Spinoza, while urging that one should help his neighbor 
where he could, condemned pity. Discuss the value of pity which 
does not express itself in actual help. 

7. Is it true that a person is known by what he does — by the 



One^s Life in His Work 351 

plan that runs through his Hfe — rather than by any other char- 
acteristic ? 

8. What would be the effect of following Dr. Alexander's 
advice to the young minister to live in his sermon f Would that 
advice apply also to other work? 

9. Discuss the value of "diffused ambition" — that is am- 
bition not directed toward attainment of success in some specific 
work. 

10. Can you measure love by the sacrifices to which it prompts 
one? By any other standard? 

11. Give examples of persons whose lives took on a new force- 
fulness and definiteness in consequence of accepting some new 
responsibility — as that of supporting the family thrust upon them 
by the death of a father. 

12. What did the Apostle James mean by saying that *' Faith 
without works is dead"? Show that that is true. 



CHAPTER XXIV 
HOW WORK MAY BE SAVED FROM DRUDGERY 

In the preceding chapter we saw that only in work is 
strength to be found. As long as one depends upon external 
conditions to supply him with the means of enjoyment, or as 
long as he keeps his attention turned inward upon his own 
interests and feelings, so long is his life flabby, scattered, 
and unsatisfactory. But when he focuses his powers upon 
some line of work, and plunges wholeheartedly into this 
work, his life takes on unity, coherence, and momentum. 

Work as drudgery. — But work alone is drudgery. It 
gradually grinds the life out of a man. If his work is hard 
and monotonous it will in time inevitably benumb his 
faculties. The superintendent, the office clerk, the travel- 
ing salesman, may sustain, or even develop, their culture, 
but the manual laborer is in danger of progressively sinking 
to the brute level. He may leave school with the intention 
of continuing to study in the evenings, but he soon finds 
out that he returns from work too tired to think, and with 
too little ambition to hunger any longer after cultural oppor- 
tunities. Bodily fatigue has an extremely paralyzing effect 
upon the brain. One can not well work hard and think 
hard. 

Edwin Markham has expressed this fact with terrible vivid- 
ness in his poem '' The Man With the Hoe '' : 

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans 
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, 
The emptiness of ages on his face 
And on his back the burden of the world. 
352 



Saving Work from Drudgery 353 

Who made him dead to rapture and despair, 
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, 
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? 
Who loosened arid let down his brutal jaw? 
Whose was the hand that slanted back his brow ? 
Whose breath blew out the Hght within his brain? 

Is this the thing the Lord God made and gave 

To have dominion over sea and land ; 

To trace the stars and search the heavens for power ; 

To feel the passion of Eternity? 

Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns 

And pillared the blue firmament with light? 

Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf 

There is no shape more terrible than this — 

More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed — 

More filled with sign and portents for the soul — 

More fraught with menace to the universe. 

What gulfs between him and the seraphim I 

Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him 

Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? 

What are the long reaches of the peaks of song, 

The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? 

Through his dread shape the suffering ages look ; 

Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop ; 

Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, 

Plundered, profaned, and disinherited. 

Cries protest to the judges of the world, 

A protest that is also prophecy. . . . 

And something like the same thing is true of work other 
than manual. The endless whirl of busy office routine, 
the typewriting of a monotonous series of letters, the adding 
of endless columns of numbers, or the serving of hordes of 
customers is likely to sap the life out of the worker. Mere 
work — work only for one^s daily bread, work to which one 
goes reluctantly and which he quits with joy — is not this 
the destroyer rather than the maker of individuality in men ? 

Work and play. — But need work be of this benumbing 
kind? Is it merely the fact that it is hard that makes it 
2 A 



354 Human Conduct 

dispiriting, brutalizing ? Is not play often quite as strenuous 
as any work and yet refreshing rather than benumbing? 
Are there not even men and women who plunge into what is 
really work in such a spirit as to give it for them the value 
of play? 

Difference between work and play. — These queries lead 
us to ask what is the difference between work and play. 
When the child imitates his father in shoveling snow he does 
so because he delights in the activities involved. Each time 
he lifts up a shovelful he feels his superiority and enjoys the 
feeling. He does not care about the end — getting the 
snow away — but is absorbed in his delight in the means by 
which that end is being realized. This is pure play. Play 
is always marked by this pleasure in the means rather than 
in the remote end. Again consider the man playing cards. 
He is, of course, somewhat interested in winning the game 
— and therefore is concerned with a remote end — but most 
of all he enjoys the steps by which the game is won. He is 
thrilled with pleasure every time he draws a good hand or 
makes a clever play. The winning of the game is really 
forgotten in the intense joy of the process. 

On the other hand, in work one is interested chiefly in the 
end to be attained. The means by which the end is to be 
reached are not enjoyed. Indeed so far as the activity is 
mere work the means are irksome. The day-laborer is 
looking forward to his dollars at the end of the day. He 
would, if possible, gladly evade the unpleasant tasks by which 
the money is to be earned. It is only his entirely extra- 
neous interest in a result that can not be otherwise gained 
that holds him to the uncongenial activities in which he must 
engage. 

No fixed dividing line. — Plainly, then, there is no strict 
dividing line between work and play. In so far as one enjoys 
the process it is play. In so far as one cares for an extra- 
neous end it is work. The ball player — if he is a profes- 



Saving Work from Drudgery 355 

sional — may have as his inducement his day^s pay rather 
than the pleasure of playing ; or the card player — if he is 
a gambler — may be concerned only with the stakes. In 
such case the affair becomes work. On the other hand one 
may engage in highly useful pursuits with keen enjoyment 
in every moment of the activity. This attitude was expressed 
by Professor Palmer, when he remarked : ^^ Harvard Uni- 
versity pays me for doing what I would gladly pay the Uni- 
versity for letting me do.'^ Done in such spirit work be- 
comes play. 

No job is in itself work. No activities are in themselves 
play. It is not work because it leads to useful results; it 
is not play because it is useless. It is made one or the other 
merely by the attitude of the doer. If his attitude is one of 
spontaneity, of free choice, of self-direction, of willing 
service, the job has all the joyous, the vitalizing, the human- 
izing, the vivifying attributes of play. On the other hand, 
if his attitude is one of reluctance, of obedience to external 
compulsion, of service merely for pay, it has all the dull, 
benumbing, dehumanizing attributes of mere work. 

Work should be spontaneous. — Herein, then, lies the 
reconciliation of our two apparently conflicting facts. It 
remains true that only in whole-souled work can strength 
be found. On the other hand there is no reason why all 
work could not be done in such spirit as to free it of its de- 
humanizing aspects. Not by mere work but by loyal work 
is the knot untied. The strong man must freely choose 
his job and carry it through in the spirit of spontaneous self- 
impulsion and self-direction. He must find a vocation that 
is congenial to his spirit, and — more important still — one 
in the value of which he can firmly believe. He must then 
see that he is winning a victory, and hence realizing himself 
— experiencing his strength — at every turn of his work, 
and in every one of its achievements must feel that he is 
making a contribution to the world that will forever enrich 



356 Human Conduct 

it. He must be able proudly to stand with shoulders back 
and head erect and say to men : '^ The world would have a 
gap at this point were I not here to fill that gap with the 
results of my efforts ; nay even without the product of this 
very moment^s effort of mine something would be incom- 
plete/' 

Loyal work not dehumanizing. — Who takes such attitude 
finds no task irksome. He may return at night tired in body, 
but he can not be crushed in spirit. Throughout the day 
his heart has beaten with that vigor which can come only 
with optimism, with a sense of continual victories, and with 
a consciousness of being worth something in the world. 
When as teacher he has taught and inspired his class he feels 
that in that hour he has implanted leaven which will spread 
until all the world will in some measure and throughout all 
(the future profit by it. When as a mason he has cut his 
stone and fitted it into its place in the wall, he feels that 
therein he has accomplished a fact which makes the world 
by so much the richer. When even as scavenger he has 
cleaned the gutter or the cesspool, he is aware that but for 
his act a socially necessary deed would have been left undone. 
He takes his pay as a necessary means of livelihood, but does 
his work enthusiastically as a bit of social service. Such 
spontaneous, expansive attitude has been scientifically 
demonstrated to be an effective antidote to deterioration, 
and even largely to fatigue. How fully one is entitled to this 
sense of the dignity and importance of his work, and on what 
principles the loyal servant must choose his task, we shall 
later consider at length. 

The first means, then, of saving work from becoming 
drudgery, and from crushing one's life instead of making 
it, is to enter into that work freely, spontaneously, loyally ; 
to offset its irksomeness with a continual sense of its social 
value ; to escape being a mere machine driven by others 
by voluntarily directing oneself in the requisite way. 



Saving Work from Drudgery 357 

Recreation. — But there is a second means also important ; 
namely, to keep alive the broader human element through 
giving some time each week to its cultivation. That will 
involve two lines of endeavor, — recreation, and personal 
culture. 

Recreation is as essential as work. In fact, in the long 
run, a man can accomplish more by interspersing proper 
recreation periods within his work than by keeping con- 
tinually down to the same routine. One's very loyalty, then, 
to his work may induce him, if he is intelligently loyal, 
sometimes to quit that work for shorter or longer spells. 
Such recreation may take either the form of bodily or mental 
rest, on the one hand, or that of activity in a different direction 
from that of one's central vocation, on the other. There 
are times when it is proper to take one's rest by merely 
remaining quiet — times when muscular or mental fatigue 
has left the tissues so depleted that they protest against 
any sort of activity. But there are more frequently times 
when what one needs is change, rather than cessation, of 
activity. To bring into play other organs of the body is 
recreative as well as, and often much better than, mere idle- 
ness. The scholar needs sometimes to read light literature 
which does not make him think ; the office clerk can rest best 
in an hour's football practice ; the ironmolder may find his 
recreation in a game of pool or of dominoes ; the housewife 
may again get hold of herself through an evening at the sewing 
circle or in private company. Even the man who has hard 
manual labor may find it to his advantage to follow his day's 
work with calisthenics for the correction of physical defects 
which his work tends to produce. Dr. Frances Gulick Jewett 
says on this point : 

Muscles stay in the position in which they do their hardest 
work. . . . From the man who digs to earn his daily bread on 
the farm or in the coal mine, to the man who climbs a mast and 
risks his life in the tempest, — through each occupation of life 



\ 



358 Human Conduct 

the muscles of the body are called upon to do their hardest work 
in special positions. And it sometimes seems as if numberless 
human beings would have to submit to their fate and accept muscles 
which their work has forced on them ; for after a man has chosen 
his life work he can not leave it simply because he objects to the 
shape which it is giving to his body. 

Fortunately, however, there is a happy outlook even for such 
people as are obliged to work with their bodies bent, for there is 
another inportant fact about this law of contracting and stretch- 
ing. I give it concisely : 

Brief, vigorous exercise in the right position will undo much 
of the harm of long-continued exercise in the wrong position. 

If a man who works in a bent posture all day will spend five 
minutes a day in taking vigorous exercise with his back straight, 
alternately tightening hard and then relaxing the muscles of his 
back and neck, he will find that, within one month, there will be 
an improvement. By this simple device a man can save himself 
from his rounded back and be able to hold his head where it should 
be. 

Value of an avocation, — Indeed it is wise, in the interests 
of proper recreation, for everybody to have not only a voca- 
tion, which constitutes his chief business, but also an avoca- 
tion, which occupies his spare time. The teacher may raise 
chickens on the side, the day laborer may study History or 
Political Economy, the banker may write articles for the 
magazines, the merchant may make for himself pieces of 
furniture, and the central work of each will profit by the side 
line rather than suffer from it. Indeed, many of the world^s 
most noted men are known not for what constituted their 
vocations, but for what they did in their leisure hours as 
pleasant avocation. Such was the case with Spinoza, 
Bacon, and Hobbes in Philosophy ; with Galileo, Faraday, 
and Hugh Miller in science ; with Burns, Grote, and Madam 
de Genlis in History and Literature. But where one does not 
have such systematic avocation its place may be taken by 
membership in an athletic club, by hunting and fishing trips, 
or by club or literary society activities. To have such avo- 
cation is not to split one^s life and run it in two directions. 



Saving Work from Drudgery 359 

Rather the avocational activities are subordinated and 
supplementary to the central vocation, and add to this scope 
and momentum. 

Personal culture. — On the other hand, and parallel to 
the activities discussed above, one may save oneself from 
becoming a mere machine through personal culture. It is 
through such personal culture that the human, the universal 
element in man is nurtured. If this culture takes the form 
of the reading of literature, one enters there into the emotions 
common to all mankind. For true literature is not of this 
town or that, of this country or that, of this race or that, of 
this age or that. Its spirit is the universal spirit of all times 
and all places, so that, when translated into other languages, 
or brought to light in other centuries than those in which it 
originated, it still echoes what is most fundamental and most 
universal in man^s life. So that by reading it the rough edges 
of one's provincialism tend to be ground off, and one is 
absorbed into the common life of mankind. 

If the culture takes the form of the study of history, that 
too is broadening and humanizing in its effect. It enables 
one to see how other men have looked at the world^s prob- 
lems. It takes one out of that little cycle which makes up 
his petty present life and indefinitely widens the scope of 
his vision. It enables him to share consciously in that large 
current of universal life which has been flowing through the 
ages. If his culture takes the form of the appreciation of 
science, or of art, or of music, that too can lift him out of his 
rut and bring him to share in the larger world of his fellows. 
For in these realms all men are brothers. To the extent to 
which we enter into the ideals and passions exercised in these 
fields, to that extent do the limitations of our private selves 
fall away and we become one with the throbbing life of 
humanity. 

Liberalized vocation. — But this culture is probably worth 
most as a means of salvation from drudgery when it centers 



360 Human Conduct 

more or less definitely about one's vocation and liberalizes 
that. There is no job so menial but that it opens out into 
the broadest human interests. A certain ambitious youth 
was set to the unpromising and effeminate task of selling lace. 
But he was undaunted by the apparent narrowness of the 
field. Although having then nothing to do with the purchase 
of lace, he took to studying lace catalogues in order to ac- 
quaint himself with the various kinds and their uses, and 
with the various manufacturers, their prices and claims. 
Then, to enlarge his hold upon the field, he studied commer- 
cial geography and economics and thus acquainted himself 
with the commercial and industrial conditions under which 
lace is manufactured and distributed. And then, that he 
might be able to answer in a more intelligent way his cus- 
tomers' questions regarding the effect of certain dyes, the 
conditions of the shrinking, and the rotting of the fabrics, 
etc., he made a thorough study of chemistry. It is no 
wonder that in a few years this young man was no longer 
at the lace counter as a clerk, but the company's expert buyer 
of laces in Paris. He had not allowed his menial job to 
' cramp him. Instead he had followed out the implications 
of the job until it had widened into the whole of human cul- 
ture and endeavor, and it was this large human element 
that he brought each day to focus upon his work. 

Implications of one's job. — And in this same way every 
job can open out into infinity until it becomes too big in its 
implications and too sacred for any man. The newspaper 
correspondent can acquaint himself with the grave social 
consequences of his work and the responsibihties which it 
involves, with the marvelous development of journaHsm, 
with the wonderful complexity and organization of the system 
to which he belongs. The blacksmith can inform himself on 
the physics and chemistry of the processes with which he 
deals, with the long history of the craft, and with the beautiful 
and inspiring literature that centers about it and ideahzes it. 



Saving Work from Drudgery 361 

Even the street cleaner or the bootblack can find enough of 
science, of history, of literature, of inspiring story centering 
about his work to make it full of dignity and of poetry. 

There is no job into which one can not go in a professional 
spirit. There is no job which does not open out into the 
whole of human culture. There is no job which of itself is 
of such a nature as to cramp and brutalize a man. The 
crymg need is rather for men and women who are big enough 
adequately to man our so-called menial jobs. Says Carlyle : 

The situation that has not its duty, its ideal, was never yet 
occupied by man. Yes, here in this poor miserable, hampered, 
despicable, actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or no- 
where is thy ideal : work it out therefrom, and working, believe, 
live, be free. Fool ! the ideal is in thyself. 

In a similar vein Emerson, in opening his oration on ^' The 
American Scholar,'^ says : 

The planter, who is man sent out into the field to gather food, 
is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. 
He sees his bushel and his cart and nothing beyond, and sinks into 
the farmer instead of the man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely 
ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine 
of his craft and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes 
a form ; the attorney a statute book ; the mechanic a machine ; 
the sailor a rope of a ship. In this distribution of functions the 
scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state he is man 
thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, 
he tends to become a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of 
other men's thinking. 

Strength through spontaneous work. — The work, then, 
in which the strong man must find his strength and his 
individuality must not consist in one little rill running through 
the desert. Rather it must consist in an immeasurable dam 
concentrating its force upon one definite outlet, and project- 
ing its waters with that power which only a circumscribed 
outlet, fed by an unlimited store, can possess. The strong 



362 Human Conduct 

man must be one with his fellow craftsmen, one with his 
nation, one with all his fellow-men, one with the universe. 
Yet all this breadth of spirit he must not possess merely as an 
intellectual luxury, but must at every moment draw it to a 
focus through his life and concentrate it upon that work in 
the carrying through of which his life, his individuality, his 
selfhood consists. He must, that is, be not only a worker 
but a loyal worker — a worker who so supplements his voca- 
tional with avocational activities as to make him in the 
long run the most effective social servant; a worker who 
chooses his job not because he must but because the work 
calls him; a spontaneous, self-directed and self-impelled 
worker ; a worker who labors in conscious and willing coopera- 
tion with his fellows ; a worker who goes to his job, however 
menial in reputation, with an enthusiastic professional spirit, 
thus dignifying his work with the dignity of his own spirit. 

EXERCISES 

1. Do you know people who have, as the result of "experience" 
with the world, gradually lost their idealism? Describe the 
process. 

2. Is "The Man with the Hoe" a true picture of life? To 
what extent can we compensate, by idealizing through poetry, "the 
toilworn craftsman who laboriously conquers the earth and makes 
her man's"? 

3. Give examples, from your own observation, of tasks which, 
although requiring sustained effort and leading to useful results, 
are yet done in such spirit as to make them essentially play. Do 
you believe that every task could be done in this spirit ? 

4. Illustrate how one can view his work as a means of express- 
ing his own individuality and of thus realizing himself. Why is 
that worth while ? 

5. Is it true that if one left a bit of his work undone a gap 
would be left in the world? Could not his neighbor do the neg- 
lected job? But who would then do the job which this neighbor 
would be obliged to leave undone in consequence? 

6. Is a bit of work in which you pride yourself ever dehumaniz- 
ing? Is it fatiguing? 



Saving Work from Drudgery 363 

7. What is the difference between vocation and avocation? 
What may constitute a schoolboy's avocation? To what extent 
should such avocational activities be engaged in by school boys? 
To what extent by out-of-school people? When does an avoca- 
tion become a handicap? 

8. Much has been said of late in defense of school training 
designed to fit the pupil for ** enjoyment of leisure." Show how 
the pupil might be fitted also for "enjoyment of labor." 

9. By trying it out with several unpromising jobs, test the 
truth of the statement that "There is no job which of itself is of 
such a nature as to cramp and brutahze a man." 

10. Do you know of any persons, either from your own ac- 
quaintance or from history or Hterature, who, in spite of the fact 
that their work is of an unpromising nature, are yet "grand men," — 
men of large human interests and sympathies ? 



CHAPTER XXV 
LOYALTY 

In the preceding chapter we were led to the conclusion 
that not merely in work, but in loyal work, is that strength to 
be found for which we have been inquiring. One's life must 
be focused in pursuit of some definite line of activity which 
makes up a consistent bit of w^ork. But around this focus 
there must be grouped those larger interests and sympathies 
which make a man one with his fellows. His life must be 
inclusive, comprehensive, even universal in scope, yet all 
of its manifold content must point together into one channel 
of expression. Through the true individual, in the per- 
formance of his mission, all of the universe, then, gets 
expressed, and, in turn, through a cultivation of his larger 
human relations, the petty life of the individual is widened 
out until it becomes, in extent and significance, one with the 
universe. 

Loyalty. — But we must not think of work here in the 
narrow sense in which the term is ordinarily understood. It 
must mean for us any consistent, purposeful activity. And, 
that we may avoid misunderstanding, we had better adopt, 
at this stage, a word with a wider and better connotation — 
service. Or, better still, we may take over from a great 
recent philosopher the yet stronger term, loyalty. 

Loyalty, as Professor Royce defined it, is ^^ the willing 
and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a 
cause.'' This cause may be whatever you please. It may 
be the cleaning, with scrupulous care, of the streets ; the 
molding, as best you can, of iron plates ; the designing, with 

364 



Loyalty 365 

utmost fidelity, of houses; the performance, with your 
deepest devotion, of your duty as teacher ; the development 
of your lodge or your church ; the improvement of your 
school or college ; the stimulation of an interest in good read- 
ing ; the cleansing of the politics of your town ; the protection 
of your nation from its enemies ; or the propagation of some 
large social reform which you have taken to heart. But, 
whatever it is, you are giving in it loyal service if you have 
freely chosen it, out of the mass of duties that await perform- 
ance in the world, as the mission that shall be yours, and 
are plunging wholeheartedly into it. 
Professor Royce says : 

A loyal man is one who has found, and who sees, neither mere 
individual fellow-men to be loved or hated, nor mere conventions 
or customs, nor laws to be obeyed, but some social cause, or some 
system of causes, so rich, so well-knit, and to him so fascinating, 
and withal so kindly in its appeal to his natural self-will, that he 
says to his cause : *'Thy will is mine and mine is thine. In thee 
I do not lose but find myself, living intensely as I live for thee.'' 
If one could find such a cause, and hold it for his lifetime before 
his mind, clearly observing it, passionately loving it, and yet 
calmly understanding it, and steadily and practically serving it, 
he would have one plan of life, and this plan of Hfe would be his 
own plan, his own will set before him, expressing all that his self- 
will has ever sought. Yet this plan would also be a plan of obedi- 
ence, because it would mean living for the cause. 

Implications of loyalty. — Pertains to small as well as 
great occasions. — It is plain that, in this sense, loyalty means 
much more than it usually suggests. It has often been used 
only in connection with some great crisis. It was supposed 
that one could show his loyalty to his nation by sacrificing 
his life for her protection against her enemies in war. It 
was believed that a man could prove his loyalty to God by 
suffering martyrdom for His cause. It was understood that 
one could exemplify loyalty to his friend by sticking to that 
friend at the cost of some great personal inconvenience. 



366 Human Conduct 

But the opportunities for loyalty were supposed to come 
rather rarely. It was not supposed to have anything to do 
with the dull routine of everyday affairs. Now the instances 
cited above are usually cases of loyalty, but, understood in 
our broader sense, the term includes much more than these. 
Loyalty is possible not only in great crises, where the flare 
of trumpets and the beating of drums attend it, but wherever 
there is a bit of service to be rendered of no matter how little 
apparent dignity. One can rank among the truly loyal just 
as well by hoeing his garden properly and producing needed 
food as by leading an army. 

Does not stop with sentimentalism. — It is plain, too, that 
loyalty means no mere evanescent emotion, as it sometimes 
seems to imply. It does not consist of extravagant pro- 
testations and Fourth-of-July orations. It is a practical and 
thoroughgoing devotion to the service of some cause, and, as 
practical, it must work for concrete results. It demands 
that one steady himself until he can see where to take hold 
that he may serve his cause most effectively, and that he 
then quietly but persistently realize this service in action. 
It unselfs him — takes the center of his interest out of his 
own skin and implants it in his cause, so that his sole joy 
is in the prosperity of his cause. In fact he is so lost in his 
cause that he retains no separate individuality. In it his 
private self finds that enlargement — that universality - — 
that it takes to make of a man a whole man, and in him it 
finds that definiteness and concreteness of practical expression 
that it takes to bring it from the realm of impotent ideals to 
that of vital reality. 

Loyalty free from contradictions. — Now loyalty as a 
plan of life is not subject to the contradictions from which 
the other plans, which we have tried out, break down. It 
is not morbidly subjective. One projects himself continually 
into his work, and the more he becomes fascinated by his 
cause, and the more he devotes himself to it, the more both 



Loyalty 367 

he and it prosper. It does not make for flabbiness, as the 
search for pleasure does, for one stands up steadfastly for 
those specific conquests which he means to wage for his 
cause. Indeed from the largeness and nobility of his cause 
he gains poise, constancy, firmness. Self-denial he practices, 
but not for its own sake, and hence, while he wins the 
dignity and balance of the Stoic, he escapes the stolidity of 
the independent self. His life he wishes to be broadly 
human, to be vigorously and vitally pulsating, but this rich 
life he insists upon bringing as a sacrifice to his cause. It is, 
too, a method of seeking strength, which, unlike that of the 
popular hero, is open to all. Nor is the loyal man a weather- 
vane as is the would-be leader of crowds. Neither does he 
know such failure as the pleasure seeker, or the wealth seeker, 
is almost sure to suffer. The loyal man never really fails. 
He may not at the time get objective results, and may even 
die before the victory is won, but if his devotion has been 
sincere and intelligent the influence of his loyalty will spread 
to others, and his work will be carried through by those 
upon whom his mantle falls. The achievement of the 
personal self-seeker is cut off at his own death, but that of 
the loyal man continues. For the success at which the 
latter has been aiming is the success of his cause, and toward 
this future servants can continue to work on the founda- 
tions which he has laid. 

But if, as such, his work should not prosper, still he can 
not fail. You remember Longfellow's statement : 

Talk not of wasted affection ; affection never was wasted ; 

If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters returning 

Back to the springs like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment. 

And so one might say of loyalty. Whether one's cause 
succeeds or fails he gains, if he has plunged devotedly and 
whole-heartedly into it, that calm joy, dignified by sorrow, 
that peaceful exaltation, that pungent strength, which can 



368 Human Conduct 

come only to those who are conscious of having served at 
their best in a good cause. The justification of one^s loyalty 
is thus in the enrichment of his own life, and of this enrich- 
ment no accidents of fortune can rob him. 

Loyal man free from compulsion. — But, what is from our 
standpoint most important of all, the loyal man is not driven 
by external compulsion. He is his own master. It is true 
that he belongs to his cause rather than to himself. He 
claims no rights other than those which his cause allows 
him. He has no separate personality, for he is wholly 
absorbed in his work. Yet he belongs to his cause for no 
other reason than because he himself chooses to belong to it. 
He yields to its claims upon him merely because he fully 
acknowledges those claims. There is no compulsion what- 
ever about it. He can withdraw from his cause at his pleas- 
ure. He can reject any or all of its obligations at any time. 
He can assert his individual caprice as against the systematic 
devotion to which it calls him whenever he will. But so 
long as he remains loyal he chooses not to do so. He himself 
wills the hard, aching toil which his cause requires. He him- 
self inquires what rules are required by its best interests in 
the long run, and voluntarily adopts them as his own. On 
his own initiative he considers which of his habits or 
mannerisms militate against the success of his cause, and 
gladly and spontaneously foregoes them. He thus escapes 
external compulsion by orienting himself appropriately from 
within — by doing what is required even before it is asked. 

Loyalty and convention. — School conventions. Hence 
conventions do not gall the loyal man as we earlier saw that 
they do the would-be independent self. For he does not 
regard them as a challenge to his individuality, and is hence 
not humiliated by them. When, for example, he is tempted 
to revolt against the rules of his school he reasons that these 
were formulated, not to crush student life but to promote it ; 
that^ however irksome they may seem in his particular case 



Loyalty 369 

in this specific instance, they are on the whole good ; that 
they are such as he, in his better moments, would wish them 
to be ; that they therefore express his own most rational 
will ; and that he is most an individual, not when he blindly 
opposes them, but when he accepts them as his own and 
conforms to them of his own free choice. Certainly it is 
possible to be as virile in fighting for the welfare of one's 
school as in fighting against it. 

Social conventions. — The same thing is true of social 
conventions. The little forms of politeness, the fashions of 
the day in dress, the customs regarding honor and marriage, 
and a thousand other apparently artificial forms, the loyal 
man does not obey reluctantly as external. He recognizes 
them as having grown naturally out of certain historical 
conditions, that on the whole they have promoted life, 
and that no one can be the most effective social servant 
who needlessly antagonizes them, and hence he freely and 
spontaneously conforms to them as to creations of his own 
will. 

Political institutions, — Nor is the case different with 
political institutions. ^^ Rulers are not a terror to good 
works but to evil.'' Laws, police regulations, fire department 
rulings, may sometimes work injury, but on the whole they 
express the best interests of the average citizen. Hence 
the loyal man will regard them as expressions of his own will. 
He will gladly endure his private inconvenience, and will 
still decree that the law shall hold universally — for himself 
as well as for others. Through this voluntary acceptance — 
even this deliberate willing — of the law he will rob it of 
its mastery over him, and will remain at the center of his 
life the master pilot of his destiny. He will be able to say 
with the Psalmist, '^I delight to do thy will, O God, yea, thy 
law is hid in my heart." 

Example of Socrates. — We have a beautiful illustration 
of just this sort of thing from the life of Socrates. After 
2 B 



370 Human Conduct 

this great Athenian had been unjustly condemned to death, 
and while he was awaiting in prison his execution, his friend, 
Crito, tried to induce him to escape. Crito, who was rich, 
had arranged to bribe the jailer, and the condemned 
philosopher could easily have taken advantage of the oppor- 
tunity to save his life. But Socrates refused to do violence 
to the laws of his own city and gave, according to Plato, the 
following reasons : 

If while we were preparing to run away, or by whatever name 
we should call it, the laws and commonwealth should come and, 
presenting themselves before us, should say : " Tell me, Socrates, 
what do you propose doing? Do you design anything else by this 
procedure in which you are engaged than to destroy us, the laws, 
and the whole city, so far as you are able? Or do you think it 
possible for that city any longer to subsist, and not be subverted, 
in which judgments that are passed have no force, but are set aside 
and destroyed by private persons? ..." 

What then if the laws should say, "Socrates, was it not agreed 
between us that you should abide by the judgments which the city 
should pronounce? . . . Did we not first give you being? And 
did not your father, through us, take your mother to wife and 
beget you? Say, then, do you find fault with those laws among us 
that relate to marriage as being bad? " I should say, **I do not 
find fault with them." *' Do you with those which relate to your 
nurture when born, and the education with which you were in- 
structed? Or did not the laws, ordained on this point, enjoin 
rightly in requiring your father to instruct you in music and 
gymnastics?" I should say rightly. "Well, then, since you were 
born, nurtured, and educated through our means, can you say, 
first of all, that you are not both our offspring and our slave, as 
well you as your ancestors? And if this be so do you think that 
there are equal rights between us? ... so that if we attempt to 
destroy you, thinking it to be just, you also should endeavor, so 
far as you are able, in return, to destroy us, the laws and your 
country ; and in doing this will you say that you act justly — you 
who in reality make virtue your chief object. ... To offer 
violence to one's father or mother is not holy, much less to one's 
country. . . . 

Any one who is not satisfied w^ith us may take his property 
and go wherever he pleases. . . . But whoever continues with us 



Loyalty 371 

after he has seen the manner in which we administer justice, and 
in other respects govern the city, we now say that he has in fact 
entered into a compact with us to do what we order ; and we 
affirm that he who does not obey is in three respects guilty of in- 
justice — because he does not obey us who gave him being, and be- 
cause he does not obey us who nurtured him, and because, having 
made a compact that he would obey us, he neither does so nor does 
he persuade us if we do anything wrongly ; though we propose for 
his consideration, and do not rigidly command him, to do what we 
order, but leave him the choice of one of two things, either to per- 
suade us, or to do what we require, and yet he does neither of 
these. . . . 

These things, my dear friend, Crito, be assured, I seem to hear 
as the votaries of Cybele seem to hear the flutes. And the sounds 
of these words boom in my ear, and make me incapable of hearing 
anything else. 

Interdependence of individual and group. — The school. — 
Indeed no institution can be strong except as it is made up 
of such loyal, self-impelled, and self -oriented individuals. 
A school in which the students stay in line merely because 
they are compelled by school authorities to do so never 
makes a vigorous, healthy school. No matter how excellent 
its equipment or how large its student body it remains weak, 
superficial, hollow. A school is strong only when its students 
become so saturated with the spirit of loyalty that the dignity 
of their institution so effectively and so constantly haunts 
them as to inhibit any conduct incongruent with its welfare. 
Such loyalty needs no rules. It finds adequate methods of 
expressing itself upon each occasion as it arises. 

The state. — Similarly a state can be strong only when its 
citizens have caught, and spontaneously express, its better 
spirit. It can never be made such by a police force, however 
watchful. A democracy particularly is dependent upon the 
law being hid in the hearts of its citizens. Our state can 
never be safe until our citizens feel that its laws and institu- 
tions are not something external, which '^ they ^^ (that is 
others) are responsible for carrying out, but the expression 



372 Human Conduct 

of their own wills, and until they feel personally as deeply 
hurt at any injury done their state as, according to Cicero, 
did certain stalwart Romans. '^ That very distinguished 
man,^^ he says, ^^ Publius Scipio, the Pontifex Maximus, 
while he was yet a private citizen, killed Tiberius Gracchus, 
though he was only moderately disturbing the stability of 
the state /^ 

The Athenians^ oath. — In old Athens every boy, when he 
took upon himself the obligations of citizenship, took this 
significant oath : 

We will never bring disgrace to this our city, by any act of 
dishonesty or cowardice, nor ever desert our comrades. We will 
fight for the ideals and sacred things of the city, both alone and 
with many; we will revere and obey the city laws, and do our 
best to incite a like respect and reverence in others ; we will strive 
unceasingly to quicken the public sense of duty, that thus in all 
these ways we may transmit this city, greater, better, and more 
beautiful than it was transmitted to us. 

What makes a state ? — A state is made, not by its rulers, but 
by its private citizens. With them it stands or falls. Lin- 
coln, when replying to an address of welcome, once said : 

In all trying positions in which I shall be placed, and doubtless 
I shall be placed in many such, my reliance will be upon you, the 
people of the United States ; and I wish you to remember, now 
and forever, that it is your business and not mine ; that if the Union 
of these States and the liberties of this people shall be lost, it is but 
little to any one man of fifty-two years of age, but a great deal to 
the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and 
to their posterity in all coming time. It is your business to rise 
and preserve the Union and liberty for yourselves and not for me. 
I appeal to you again to constantly bear in mind that not with 
politicians, not with presidents, not with office seekers, but with 
you, is the question : Shall the Union and shall the liberties of this 
country be preserved to the latest generation? 

This same truth has been forcefully expressed by one 
of our poets : 



// 



Loyalty 373 

What constitutes a state? 
Not high raised battlements or labored mound, 

Thick wall or moated gate ; 
Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned ; 

Not bays and broad armed ports, 
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride ; 

Not starred and spangled courts. 
Where low-born baseness wafts perfume to pride. 

No ! Men — high-minded men — 
With powers as far above dull brutes endued, 

In forest, brake, or den. 
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude ; 

Men, who their duties know. 
But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain ; 

Prevent the long aimed blow. 
And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain. 

These constitute a state ; 
And Sovereign Law, that state's collective will, 

O'er thrones and globes elate 
Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill. . . . 

Value of solidarity mutual. — And this value of solidarity, 
of loyal cooperation, holds not only of the state but of every 
other group as well — educational, industrial, social, political, 
military. Nor is the advantage solely on the side of the 
group. The profit is mutual, for, as it is true that a group 
can be strong only as its members are strong and united, so 
it is also true that the individual can find his strength only 
by joining himself to groups of his fellows. To be a whole 
he must join a whole. It is true that he thus becomes a 
spoke in a wheel, but, as Royce remarks, his alternative is 
to be a spoke out of a wheel, which is infinitely worse. 
Kipling says : 

When crew and captain understand each other to the core, 

It takes a gale and more than a gale to put their ship ashore ; 

For one will do what the other commands, although they are chilled 

to the bone. 
And both together can live through weather that neither can face 

alone. 



374 Human Conduct 

And elsewhere this same poet sings : 

Now this is the law of the jungle, 
And this law runneth forward and back, 

That the strength of the pack is the wolf, 
And the strength of the wolf is the pack. 

All work dignified. — The fact that it requires a cooperat- 
ing group to cpnstitute a whole makes it true that all work 
done in the same spirit of loyalty is of equal dignity. A 
strange bit of snobbishness has got hold of society and has 
induced men to look upon certain work as dignified and others 
as menial. But it would be ordinarily just as impossible for 
the professional man to do the work of the laborer as for 
the latter to do that of the former. It has required long and 
patient training to acquire skill in the one, just as it has in 
the other. Some time ago I stood and watched a young 
carpenter laying down quarter-round in a house. He was 
fitting it together with such perfect joints that it was almost 
impossible to detect them, even when one knew where they 
were. And as I watched him I was convinced that the ability 
to do what he could do was no less enviable than my ability 
to conduct a school and to write a few scribs of psychology. 

Men dignify their callings. — It may be that, as a class, 
persons engaged in certain callings are characterized by a 
better spirit than those in other callings, but that is not the 
result of the callings, but of the men themselves. They 
have dignified their callings by their own attitude, and there 
is no reason why persons in other vocations should not 
equally dignify theirs. Harden advises : 

If your vocation be only a humble one, elevate it with more 
manhood than others put into it. Put into it brains and heart 
and energy and economy. Broaden it by originality of methods. 
Extend it by enterprise and industry. Study it as you would a 
profession. Learn everything that is to be known about it. Con- 
centrate your faculties upon it, for the greatest achievements are 
reserved for the man of single aim, in whom no rival powers divide 
the empire of the soul. Better adorn your own than seek another's place. 



Loyalty 375 

In the same vein Emerson writes : 

We like only such actions as have already long had the praise 
of men, and do not perceive that anything man can do may be 
divinely done. We think greatness entailed or organized in some 
places or duties, in certain offices and occasions, and do not see 
that Paganini can extract rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein 
from a jews-harp, and a nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper 
with his scissors, and Landseer out of swine, and a hero out of the 
pitiful habitation and company in which he was hidden. What we 
call obscure condition or vulgar society is that condition and 
society whose poetry is not yet written, but which you shall pres- 
ently make as enviable and renowned as any. Accept your genius 
and say what you think. . . . To make habitually a new esti- 
mate — that is elevation. 

Each has own post. — Certainly no work is of itself un- 
dignified if it is socially necessary. Society would suffer 
just as truly without one bit of it as without another. Each 
man has his own post to guard, or his part of the line to 
advance, and a break in the lines at one point may be just as 
fatal as at another. 

The mountain and the squirrel 

Had a quarrel. 

And the former called the latter ** Little Prig" ; 

Bun replied 

*'You are doubtless very big; 

But all sorts of things and weather 

Must be taken in together 

To make up a year 

And a sphere. 

And I think it no disgrace 

To occupy my place. 

If I'm not so big as you, 

You are not so small as I, 

And not half so spry. 

I'll not deny you make ' 

A very pretty squirrel track. 

Talents differ ; all is weU and wisely put ; 

If I can not carry forests on my back, 

Neither can you crack a nut." 



376 Human Conduct 

Loyal man called by need. — In fact the loyal man will 
not choose his work on the basis of its attractiveness. He 
will be called rather by its necessity, and the very fact that 
others shun it and tend to leave it unperformed will make 
it so much the more attractive to him. There is no challenge 
from what every man is willing to do. It calls for no heroism 
to undertake that. One can not make his life uniquely 
significant by doing a job that others could and would dupli- 
cate. His challenge is rather from that job that, apart from 
him, would be left undone, and that would thus leave a gap 
in God^s world. This may, indeed, be a job too big for any 
one else to handle, but it is more likely to be one which others 
spurn — one where a man must work unknown and un- 
appreciated — one where one must live and die a dog's 
life — but where yet the service rendered is indispensable. 
But the loyal man will stand in this but-for-him for- 
saken gap, and perform the work with a quiet, uncom- 
plaining dignity, conscious that no task is small that is 
blessed of God. 



Suppose the little cowslip 

Should hang its golden cup, 
And say, "I'm such a tiny flower, 

I'd better not grow up " ; 
How many a weary traveler 

Would miss its fragrant smell ! 
How many a little child would grieve 

To lose it from the dell ! 

Suppose the glistening dewdrop 

Upon the grass should say, 
**What can a little dewdrop do? 

I'd better roll away" ; 
The blade on which it rested, 

Before the day was done, 
Without a drop to moisten it. 

Would wither in the sun. 



Loyalty 377 

Suppose the little breezes, 

Upon a summer's day, 
Should think themselves too slight to cool 

The traveler on his way ; 
Who would not miss the smallest 

And softest ones that blow, 
And think they made a great mistake 

If they were acting so ? 

Like rills from the mountain together that run, 

And make the broad river below ; 

So each Httle life, and the work of each one 

To one common current shall flow ; 

And down on its bosom, like ships on the tide, 

The hopes of mankind shall move on ; 

Nor in vain have we lived, nor in vain have we died, 

If we live in the work we have done. 



EXERCISES 

1. Does loyalty require a boy to support his chum when in 
conflict with his school or his state ? Is loyalty given to individuals 
or to more general causes? Why? 

2. Is it true that the loyal man wins a kind of victory even in 
defeat? Would you exchange objective success for the joy of 
serving in a just but losing cause? In what sense was the death 
of Jesus and of Socrates a stimulus to the work for which they 
stood? 

3. Show how one can be a more virile member of a school, or 
of a state, by working with the authorities rather than against 
them. How does student government apply to this? 

4. Think over some laws or social customs, and consider 
whether you would have them different. Is it true that they can 
be accepted as expressions of your own rational will? 

5. Was the attitude of Socrates right? 

6. Is it true that the really loyal group needs no rules? Il- 
lustrate. 

7. When a new cinder walk is laid, people walk alongside of 
it rather than on it. Yet, if it is to be speedily made usable, it 
must be walked on. What will the loyal man do? Why? 

8. Is it true that a man gains more than he loses by "attach- 



378 Human Conduct 

ing himself to a whole"? Test this out by considering the 
requirements for success in politics, social reform, industry, 
science, etc. 

9. Can you point to a kind of work that is socially useful, yet, 
in itself, menial? Could the loyal man get for it a new estimate? 
Find examples. 

10. How will the loyal man choose his task? Illustrate. 



CHAPTER XXVI 
CHOOSING A VOCATION 

Individual differences and specialization in work. — The 
modern industrial world, in which one must take his place 
as worker, is amazingly complex. No one man can any 
longer cover its whole range. He must be a specialist. He 
must fit himself into some particular little niche in the gen- 
eral industrial machine. Now if people were all alike, a 
vocation could properly be entered merely at haphazard, 
for every one could equally succeed in any post, but this 
condition is by no means a fact. Both psychological experi- 
ment and common observation prove that individuals do 
differ and differ profoundly in their qualities. None of them 
are good all around, and probably none of them are bad in 
every respect, but each has his own peculiar strength. 
According to Emerson, ^^ The crowning fortune of a man is 
to be born to some pursuit which finds him in employment 
and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broad 
swords, or canals, or statues, or songs. ^' 

Artemus Ward says : 

Every one has got a fort. It's some men's fort to do one thing, 
and some other men's fort to do another, while ther are numeris 
shiftless critters goin' round loose whose fort is not to do nothin'. 

Twice I've endevered to do things which they wasn't my fort. 
The first time was when I undertook to lick a owdashus cuss who 
cut a hole in my tent and krawled threw. Sez I, ** My gentle sir, 
go out or I shall fall onto you putty hevy." Sez he, **,Wade in ole 
Wax Figgers," whereupon I went for him, but he cawt me powerful 
on the hed and knocht me threw the tent into a cow pastur. He 
pursood the attack and flung me into a mud puddle. As I arose 

379 



380 Human Conduct 

and rung out my drencht garmints, I concluded fitin' wasn't my 
fort. I'll now rize the curtain on scene 2nd. ... I thought I'd 
hist in a few swallers of suthin' strengthenin'. Konsequents was I 
histed in so much I didn't zactly know whereabouts I was. . . . 
I then bet I could play hoss. So I hitched myself to a kanawl 
bote, there bein' two other bosses behind and another ahead of 
me. But the bosses bein unused to such a arrangemunt, begun 
to kick and squeal and rair up. ... I was rescood, and as I was 
bein carried to the tavern on a hemlock bored I sed in a feeble voice 
'' Boys, playin' hoss isn't my fort.'* 

Moral : Never don't do nothin' which isn't your fort, for if 
you do you'll find yourseK splashin' round in the kanawl, figgera- 
tively speakin'. 

Maladjustment. — ^^ No man/^ says Bulwer, " struggles 
perpetually and victoriously against his own character; 
and one of the first principles of success in life is so to regulate 
our career as rather to turn our physical constitution and 
natural inclinations to good account than to endeavor to 
counteract the one or oppose the other. '^ ^^ Civilization/^ 
remarks Marden, ^^ will mark its highest tide when every 
man has chosen his proper work. No man can be ideally 
successful until he has found his place. Like a locomotive 
he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere else.'' '^ Like 
a boat on a river/' says Emerson, ^^ every boy runs against 
obstructions on every side but one. On that side all obstruc- 
tion is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening 
chainnel into an infinite sea." ^^ Whatever you are by na- 
ture/' Sydney Smith advises, '^ keep to it ; be what nature 
intended you for and you will succeed ; be anything else 
and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing." 

Vocational misfits. — In consequence of disregarding this 
evident provision of nature, and choosing according to 
some artificial standard, scores of men are out of place, and 
are at least relatively failing in consequence. Harden tells 
us that : 

Half the world seems to have found uncongenial occupation as 
though the human race had been shaken up together and had ex- 



Choosing a Vocation 381 

changed places in the operation. A servant girl is trying to teach, 
and a natural teacher is tending store. Good farmers are murder- 
ing the law, while Choates and Websters are running down farms, 
each tortured by the consciousness of unfulfilled destiny. Boys 
are pining in factories who should be wrestling with Greek and 
Latin, and hundreds are chafing beneath unnatural loads in college 
who should be on the farm or before the mast. Artists are spreading 
*' daubs" on canvas who should be whitewashing board fences. 
Behind counters stand clerks who hate the yardstick and neglect 
their work to dream of other occupations. A good shoemaker 
writes a few verses for the village paper, his friends call him a poet, 
and the last, with which he is familiar, is abandoned for the pen, 
which he uses awkwardly. Other shoemakers are cobbling in 
Congress, while statesmen af e pounding shoe-lasts. Laymen are 
murdering sermons w^hile Beechers and Whitefields are failing as 
merchants, and people are wondering what can be the cause of 
empty pews. A boy who is already making something with tools 
is railroaded through the university and started on the road to 
inferiority in one of the three honorable professions. Real sur- 
geons are handHng the meatsaw and cleaver, while butchers are 
amputating human limbs. 

Misfits avoidable. — And yet men and women who are 
miserable failures in one place could have been happy and 
successful in their proper places. Professor Muensterberg, 
who has made an elaborate study of the matter, says : 

I frequently received the assurance that whenever an in- 
dustrious energetic man is unsuccessful in one kind of work, a 
trial is made with him in another department, and that by such 
shifting the right place can often be found for him. Young people 
to whom, in spite of long trial and the best will, it seems impossible 
to supply certain automatic machines, become excellent workers 
at much more difficult labor in the same establishment. Women 
who are apparently careless and inattentive when they have to 
distribute their attention over a number of operations do high 
class work when they are engaged in a single activity ; and in other 
cases the opposite is reported. 

I may mention a few concrete chance illustrations. In a 
pencil factory the women in one department have to grasp with 
one movement a dozen pencils, no more and no less. Some learn 
this at once without effort, and they earn high wages ; others 



382 Human Conduct 

never can learn it in spite of repeated trials. If those who fail 
in this department are transferred for instance to the department 
where the gold leaf is carefully to be applied to the pencils be- 
fore stamping, very often they show great fitness in spite of the 
extreme exactitude needed for this work. ... It has been found 
that the most rapid and accurate girls at sorting are not seldom 
useless on the machines. They press the wrong keys and make 
errors in copying the totals from the machine indicators to the 
file cards. On the other hand some of the best machine operators 
are very slow and inaccurate at the sorting table. Girls have been 
found very poor at the work at which they were first set, and very 
successful and efficient as soon as they had been transferred from 
the one to the other. 

Hope Jot all, — There is, in fact, no one who, if he will 
find his place and then put energy into his work, can not 
succeed. He need not be discouraged, no matter how mis- 
erable his failure in his previous efforts. There is only one 
cause for general failure, and that is laziness, lack of ambi- 
tion, absence of backbone. Says Harden again : 

The ^'orld has been very kind to many who w^re once known 
as dunces or blockheads, after they have become very successful ; 
but it was very cross to them while they were struggling through 
discouragement and misinterpretation. Give every boy and girl 
a fair chance and reasonable encouragement, and do not condemn 
them because of even a large degree of downright stupidity; for 
many so-called good-for-nothing boys, blockheads, numskulls, 
dullards, or dunces were only boys out of their places, round boys 
forced into square holes. 

Wellington was considered a dunce by his mother. . . . Gold- 
smith was the laughing stock of his schoolmasters. . . . Robert 
Clive bore the name of ** dunce" and ** reprobate at school." . . . 
Young Linnaeus was called by his teachers almost a blockhead. . . . 
Richard B. Sheridan's mother tried in vain to teach him the most 
elementary studies. . . . Samuel Drew was one of the dullest 
and most listless boys of his neighborhood. 

... If you fail after doing your level best, examine the 
work attempted and see if it really be in the line of your bent or 
power of achievement. Cowper failed as a lawyer. He was so 
timid that he could not plead a case, but he wrote some of our 



Choosing a Vocation 383 

finest poems. Moliere found that he was not adapted to the work 
of a lawyer, but he left a great name in literature. Voltaire and 
Petrarch abandoned the law, the former choosing philosophy, the 
latter, poetry. Cromwell was a farmer until forty years old. . . . 
If instinct and heart ask for carpentry, be a carpenter ; if for 
medicine, be a physician. With a firm choice and earnest work 
a young man or woman can not help but succeed. But if there be 
no instinct, or if it be weak or faint, one should choose cautiously 
along the line of his best adaptability and opportunity. No one 
need doubt that the world has use for him. True success lies in 
acting well your part, and this every one can do. Better be a first- 
rate hod carrier than a second-rate anything. 

Talent as basis of choice. — So in choosing a profession 
the main thing to consider is one^s talent for it. Other minor 
considerations must, of course, enter, of which we shall take 
account later, but first of all comes the question of natural 
adaptation. One should never make the mistake of choos- 
ing a supposedly ^^ honorable ^^ profession merely for the 
social prestige which it carries. For, if our conclusion of 
last chapter was correct, all real service is equally honorable, 
and one must dignify his work by his own attitude toward 
it. One can be much more respectable, indeed, as a first- 
class carpenter than as a bungling clerg3^man or an inefficient 
physician. Out of his place he will be continually humili- 
ated. Instead of sharing in the dignity of his profession he 
will be the laughing stock alike of his colleagues and of the 
public. But, if he chooses that for which nature has fitted 
him, he can win respect in the performance of his work, no 
matter what its character. 

Determination of vocational talents. — But to find what 
one is best fitted for is far from a simple task. It is the 
most difficult task with which any young man or woman 
is confronted. For the youth is as yet undeveloped, and 
none of his powers seem to stand out with marked promi- 
nence. The various vocations all seem to demand talents 
beyond his command. Yet it is important that he choose, 



384 Human Conduct 

and well that he should choose at least tentatively early in 
his teens, so that his training may point toward his future 
work. 

Advice of parents and friends. — In making choice one 
can avail himself of various aids. The first of these is ad- 
vice of parents, friends, and teachers. These can judge 
one more dispassionately and impersonally than one can 
judge oneself. Yet this advice can not be taken as final, 
for it has often been seriously mistaken. This is the more 
true in proportion as the adviser is closer to one, and hence 
more blinded by prejudice. Advice from teachers is probably 
most balanced and impersonal, and therefore most depend- 
able, while that of parents, on account of their personal 
ambitions for their child and their proverbial blindness to 
his weakness, is least so. 

Everywhere there are to be found sad misfits due to 
errors of parents in trying to force children into vocations 
for which they were not adapted. According to Harden, 

Ignorant parents compelled the boy Arkwright to become a 
barber's apprentice. . . . Galileo was set apart as a physician. 
. . . The parents of Michael Angelo had declared that no son of 
theirs should ever follow the discreditable profession of an artist, 
and even punished him for covering the walls and furniture with 
sketches. . . . Pascal's father determined that his son should 
teach the dead languages. . . . The father of Joshua Reynolds 
rebuked his son for drawing pictures. . . . Turner was intended 
for a barber. . . . Claude Lorrain was apprenticed to a pastry 
cook; Moliere, the author, to an upholsterer; and Guido Reni, 
the famous painter of Aurora, was sent to a music school. . . . 
Schiller was sent to study surgery in the military school at Stutt- 
gart. . . . The physician Handel wished his son to become a 
lawyer, and so tried to discourage his fondness for music. 

Yet in all of these cases the parental wishes were radically 
wrong, and the boys found their way into the professions 
in which they became famous in spite of this misplaced 
opposition. 



Choosing a Vocation 385 

Personal inclination. — Another factor to which atten- 
tion should be given is one's personal inclination. What 
one loves he will work at enthusiastically; that in which 
one takes no delight he can not easily do otherwise than 
mechanically. 

If a man is in his place he is joyous, cheerful, happy. The 
days are all too short for him. All his powers give their consent 
to his work, say ''yes" to his occupation. He is a man, he respects 
himself, and is happy because all his powers are at play in their 
natural sphere. There is no compromising of his faculties; no 
cramping of legal acumen upon the farm ; no suppression of forensic 
oratorical powers at the shoemaker's bench ; no stifling of exuberance 
of physical strength, of visions of golden crops, and blooded cattle, 
and the loved country life in the clergyman's study, composing 
sermons to put a congregation to sleep. 

But, although inclination is on the whole indicative of 
natural fitness for the work in question, it is not to be wholly 
trusted. For very frequently, on the one hand, it is con- 
nected with an entire ignorance of the demands of the work, 
and, on the other, is influenced powerfully by suggestion. 
On this Professor Muensterberg says : 

A mere interest for one or another subject in school is in- 
fluenced by many accidental circumstances, by the personality 
of the teacher or the methods of instruction, by suggestions of 
surroundings and by home traditions, and accordingly even such 
a preference gives rather slight final indication of the individual 
mental quahties. Moreover, such mere inclinations and interests 
can not determine the true psychological fitness for a vocation. 
To choose a crude illustration, a boy may think with passion of 
the vocation of a sailor, and yet may be entirely unfit for it be- 
cause his mind lacks the ability to discriminate between red and 
green. He himself may never have discovered that he is color- 
blind, but when he is ready to turn to the sailor's calling, the ex- 
amination of his color-sensitiveness which is demanded may have 
shown the disturbing mental deficiency. Similar defects may 
exist in a boy's attention or memory, judgment or feeling, thought 
or imagination, suggestibility or emotion, and they may remain 
just as undiscovered as the defect of color-blindness, which is 
2 c 



386 Human Conduct 

characteristic of four per cent of the male population. All such 
deficiencies may be dangerous in particular callings. But while 
the vocation of the ship officer is fortunately protected nowadays 
by such a special psychological examination, most other vocations 
are unguarded against the entrance of mentally unfit individuals. 

One can trust one^s inclination only after a certain amount 
of experience with the work in question. This is the value 
of a manual training course as far as the industries are con- 
cerned. Such course does not fit one for any particular 
vocation, but it gives him a certain amount of experience 
in connection with a considerable number of fields. He 
works a few weeks at carpentry, a few at sheet-metal work, 
a few at blacksmithing, etc., and thus can find and test out 
his interests and aptitudes if they lie in any of these direc- 
tions. In evenings or Saturdays, and during the summer 
months, too, one can get employment either in, or closety 
related to, his chosen vocation, and can thus assure himself 
whether or not he is fitted for it. 

Drifting. — Another method of finding one^s vocation 
is to drift into it. One takes just what happens, at the time, 
to be open, and, before he knows it, is confirmed in this as 
his lifers work. Unfortunately this is probably the usual 
way, but it is certainly the worst. It is due to this unscientific 
manner of getting into one's work that there are so many 
and such serious misfits. 

Scientific guidance. — The most reliable way of choosing a 
vocation is one not yet very fully developed — namely through 
scientific vocational guidance. In its less developed form 
this takes the shape of a study of the qualities of the future 
worker by responses to a large number of specific questions 
put to him, to his acquaintances, and to his teachers, and 
a comparison of the qualities thus revealed with those re- 
quired in the various vocations. A number of school sys- 
tems have developed rather fully such system of scientific 
vocational guidance for their schools, and doubtless the 



Choosing a Vocation 387 

future will see much more accomplished along this hne. 
In its more developed form this scientific guidance takes the 
shape of the study of personal quahties in the psychological 
laboratory. The late Professor Hugo Muensterberg, of Har- 
vard University, worked this field extensively and with 
marked success, and every student of the subject should 
read his ^^ Psychology and Industrial Efficiency/' ''Business 
Psychology/' and ''Psychology and Social Sanity/' As an 
indication of his method of finding what persons are adapted, 
and what ones are not adapted, to a given vocation, just one 
example will be given — his test for telephone operators. 

He subjected candidates for the telephone service to six 
different tests. In the first of these he read to them num- 
bers, with a gradually increasing number of digits, which 
they were required to write down immediately after they 
had been announced, just as they would find and insert 
a plug in the proper hole in the switchboard after a number 
had been called. Next, as a test of accuracy of perception 
and also as a check on fatigue, they were each given a news- 
paper and required to strike out rapidly all the a's. Again, 
they were given twenty- four pairs of words, those in each 
pair being definitely related, and were tested as to the readi- 
ness with which they could recall the one when the other 
was announced. After these group experiments they were 
taken into a room, one by one, and put through three indi- 
vidual tests. In the first of these they were given forty- 
eight cards of four different kinds, and were required to sort 
them into four piles as rapidly as possible. In the second 
they were given a pencil, and a piece of squared paper con- 
taining small crosses, and were required to reach out and 
touch these squares with the pencil, and to do so in rhythm 
with a metronome, the purpose being to see how accurately 
they could reach to a required spot. Finally, as a test of 
general intelligence, six words, like hooh^ house^ and rain^ 
were announced to them, and they were required to give 



388 Human Conduct 

the first word that came into mind, the time required for this 
association being measured with a stop watch. The results 
of these experiments Professor Muensterberg worked up, 
and on their basis predicted who would probably succeed 
and who would fail as telephone operators. When, several 
months later, the results were compared with the professor^s 
predictions, it was found that the predictions had been 
remarkably accurate. Those persons who had stood highest 
in the test had, in the meantime, proved so efficient as to 
have been made teachers in the training of operators, while 
those who stood lowest had been found inefficient and been 
discharged. Professor Muensterberg also made similar tests 
in connection with the electric railway service, the ship 
service, and other fields, and the results of his efforts are 
extremely promising. It is not at all improbable that such 
scientific guidance may be the rule in the future. 

Choice from social viewpoint. — At any rate it is in such 
spirit that one should choose his vocation. The criterion 
should be solely what he can do best, not what his father or 
friends have sufficient ^' pull ^^ to get him started in. Says 
Marden : 

The best way to choose a vocation is to ask yourself the question, 
*' What would my government do with me if it were to consider 
scientifically my qualifications and adaptations, and place me to the 
best possible advantage for all the people?" The Norwegian pre- 
cept is a good one : '' Give thyself wholly to thy fellow men ; they 
will give thee back soon enough." We can do the most possible for 
ourselves when we are in a position where we can do the most 
possible for others. We are doing the most for ourselves and 
for others when we are in a position which calls into play, in the 
highest possible way, the greatest number of our best faculties : 
in other words, we are succeeding best for ourselves when we are 
succeeding best for others. 

Financial resources. — However, under our present in- 
dustrial conditions one's ability to prepare himself for the 
occupation in question must be considered as well as his 



Choosing a Vocation 389 

natural fitness for the work. Many vocations require col- 
lege graduation or elaborate professional training for admis- 
sion, while others demand considerable working capital 
for anything like reasonable prospect of success. This 
not every person can command. To prepare for medicine 
requires from five to eight years beyond the high school, and 
an outlay of from two to four or five thousand dollars at 
the least. Besides, one must have at command sufficient 
outside income to support himself largely during the first 
few years of his practice, as his income from his profession 
is usually a mere pittance during the first few years. Hence, 
to justify one^s choosing medicine as a profession, one must 
have available funds amounting to at least from three to 
six or eight thousand dollars. The same thing is true of 
law, and, to a somewhat less extent, of practically all the other 
professions. If one has sufficient backbone he can earn a 
part of this money as he goes along, and in rare cases all of 
it has been earned. If one has already proved his ability to 
earn at least half of the expense he may be safe in borrowing 
the other half, as the energy and frugality which enable him 
to earn large sums during vacation indicate that he probably 
will be sufficiently successful in his vocation to enable him 
to repay the loan. But one who is not sufficiently ambi- 
tious and energetic to earn money while in school should 
not borrow large sums, as the income from the already 
crowded professions is not sufficient to enable one to repay 
a large loan, at least not without much greater sacrifice than 
that involved in earning a part of the money while yet in 
school. But at the best one's financial strength must be a 
factor in deciding what shall be his vocation. 

Other points to consider. — Other factors which must 
count for something are the environment in which one is 
reared, with its particular forms of employment, the rela- 
tive demand for workers in the various fields, and the hy- 
gienic conditions incident to the various callings. One can 



390 Human Conduct 

now get books on the nature of, and the opportunities in, 
the various occupations, and one can also learn much from 
personal inquiry. No one should neglect to take advantage 
of these means of information before definite^ choosing 
his work. Among the points about which he should inquire 
are the following : 

1. The breadth of the field. 

2. The training necessary, 
(a) Time required. 

(6) Cost of training. 

(c) Where and how it can be got. 

3. The capital required. 

4. The remuneration. 

5. Opportunities for advancement. 

6. Is the field overcrowded? 

7. Its effect upon health. 

8. How to get employment. 

9. Congenial features. 
10. Uncongenial features. 

Clinging to decision. — The choice of a profession is, 
then, a serious matter, and should be made very thought- 
fully. But once made, one should no longer waver, but 
press courageously forward and make himself fit for the 
work by training and persistence. There may, of course, 
be cases where one is justified in changing after he has 
launched in his vocation, but such changes are always costly, 
and the occasions where the loss is not at least as great as 
the gain are rare. When one has once made his choice he 
has committed himself, so that he has no longer the same 
freedom that he once had. To hold back and further parry 
after he has once cut loose the anchor is to weaken himself. 
He will almost certainly find uncongenial elements which 
he had not anticipated, but these do not necessarily indicate 
that he has missed his calling. Every vocation has its 
difficulties and discouragements, which the successful worker 
must courageously meet if he would make his life count. 



Choosing a Vocation 391 

To wander from one vocation to another as soon as snags 
are encountered is to waste one^s life. Harden says : 

After once choosing your occupation, never look backward ; 
stick to it with all the tenacity you can muster. Let nothing 
tempt you or swerve you a hair's breadth from your aim, and you 
will win. Do not let the thorns which appear in every vocation, 
or temporary despondency or disappointment, shake your pur- 
pose. You will never succeed while smarting under the drudgery 
of your occupation, if you are constantly haunted with the idea 
that you could succeed better in something else. Great tenacity 
of purpose is the only thing that will carry you over the hard places 
which appear in every career to ultimate triumph. . . . 

Thousands of men who have been failures in life have done 
drudgery enough in half a dozen different occupations to have 
enabled them to reach great success, if their efforts had all been 
expended in one direction. That mechanic is a failure who starts 
out to build an engine, but does not quite accomplish it, and shifts 
into some other occupation where perhaps he will almost succeed, 
but stops just short of the point of proficiency in his acquisition 
and so fails again. The world is full of people who are almost a 
success. They stop just this side of success. Their courage 
oozes out just before they become expert. How many of us have 
acquisitions which remain permanently unavailable because not 
carried quite to the point of skill? How many people ** almost 
know a language or two,'' which they can neither write nor speak; 
a science or two, whose elements they have not quite acquired; 
an art or two partially mastered, but which they can not practice 
with satisfaction or profit ! The habit of desultoriness, which has 
been acquired by allowing yourself to abandon a half-finished 
work, more than balances any little skill gained in one vocation 
which might possibly be of use later. 

EXERCISES 

1. Is the doctrine that "Every one has got a fort" exaggerated 
in the text? 

2. If a father owns a factory or a store and has a good opening 
in it, should he put his son into the job ? Should he give his own son 
any different sort of consideration from that which he gives to any 
one else? Why? 

3. To what extent should one, in choosing his life's work, 



392 Human Conduct 

consider the efitect of a vocation upon health? Upon personal 
development ? Why ? 

4. Why is inclination alone not a sufficient test in choosing a 
vocation ? 

5. What is meant by a job's being ''open at the top"? Is, or 
is not, every job thus open at the top? Can an ambitious youth 
afford to take one that is not? 

6. How early, do you think, should one begin to consider his 
vocation? Why? Will this early choice be a specific one or will 
it only narrow the range of future choice? How? 

7. Discuss the desirability and the practicability of trying 
out, on Saturdays and during vacations, a vocation to which you 
believe you are called. Cite experiences of persons of your ac- 
quaintance who have done this. 

8. To what extent is the author right in saying that, in choosing 
a vocation which requires expensive training in preparation, one 
must consider his financial resources? Can one earn one's way 
through college as he goes? What are the advantages, and what 
the disadvantages, of attempting to do so ? 

9. What do you think of the advisability of changing one's 
vocation after one has once launched upon it? 

10. Can one give, as an acceptable excuse for flabby work, that 
he is in the wrong job? Why, or why not? 

11. Have you decided yet upon your own vocation? Have 
you seriously considered it? If not, why not? 

12. What use is made of psychological tests in the army for plac- 
ing men in that branch of the service for which they are best fitted ? 



CHAPTER XXVII 

IN THE VALLEYS — THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERIODS 
OF DISCOURAGEMENT 

Development irregular. — In our chapter on Character 
and Will we had occasion to emphasize the continuity of 
development. We said that growth had to be an unbroken 
progress — that one is obliged to mount step by step. 
The application of this principle to our doctrine of strength 
and individuality through work, for which we have con- 
tended in our last chapters, would seem to involve that 
one should choose his line of work and through it grow pro- 
gressively into a more complete embodiment of his ideals. 
But we must now make a certain qualification of that simple 
doctrine, for life is really more tragic than our simple formu- 
lation would indicate. The qualification we may let Pro- 
fessor Ames state : 

Gradual growth is not to be conceived as an absolutely regular 
movement, advancing always with the same measured increment. 
None of the processes of nature conform strictly to that concep- 
tion. On the contrary there are in all biological growth rhythm, 
periodicity, epochal moments, and level planes. Even shocks and 
crises occur. This is true of the highest forms of human develop- 
ment. The intellectual and the aesthetic life, the attainment of 
skill in any technique of a spiritual as of a practical character 
involve some vibration of interest, some pulsation of attention 
and emotion. 

In our travels onward, that is, we must pass through the 
valleys as well as over the mountain tops ; we must be con- 
tent to struggle on with our view shut in by the rocks and 
trees and dreary hillsides as well as to get occasionally a 

393 



394 Human Conduct 

noble and inspiring outlook from the summit of a command- 
ing peak. Dropping metaphor, we must often work wearily 
on with the discouraging sense that we are making little or 
no progress, and only now and then experience the keen joy 
of rapid and evident advances. 

Plateaus in the formation of habits. — This phenomenon 
of rhythmic growth has been most fully studied in the case 
of the formation of motor habits. Here it is found that 
periods of more or less rapid progress alternate with periods 
of apparent standstill. In typewriting, for example. Pro- 
fessor Bryant, Professor Book, and others found that one 
seems at first to be making little progress. Then suddenly 
the difficulties which confront one appear to break, and one 
is elated to find himself moving rapidly forward. But after 
a short period of evident progress he is again halted and, 
practice faithfully as he please, he seems unable to improve. 
But if he only continue to faithfully practice during this 
discouraging level in his development the difficulties will 
again at length break, and he will enjoy another period of 
rapid elevation. If we represent the progress of the learner 
by a graph, a typical one would run something like this : 



WEEKS OF PRACTICE 



Fig. 30. Approximate curve of practice in telegraph receiving. (From 
Thorndike's Educational Psychology, Briefer Course,) 



Psychology of Discouragement 395 

It would have, as you see, certain level places (called pla- 
teaus), interspersed between periods of relatively rapid rise. 

Swift on learning curves. — Professor Swift found the 
same thing true of learning to toss a ball. He says : 

All the curves show great irregularity of advance. Progress 
is never uniform, but always by jumps. The learner seems to 
make no gain for several days, or even longer, then he takes a leap, 
perhaps to get a good grip and stay, or may be to drop back a 
little. But if he loses his hold it is not for long, and he soo:a makes 
this higher level his starting point for new excursions. And the 
same thing is true of intellectual progress. The curve in learning 
a language is identical in character with that of acquiring a physical 
habit. Here too progress is never steady, but always by leaps, 
preceded by longer or shorter periods of apparent cessation of 
progress. There is a gradual but irregular growth in the intelligi- 
bility of the subject matter in hand, while interspersed within the 
period of general advance are days when uncertainty and con- 
fusion dominate. When in the latter condition the learner feels 
that the whole thing is hopeless. . . . Both teachers and pupils 
are discouraged because they do not understand that this is one 
of the characteristics of the learning process. Suddenly, and 
sometimes without premonition, the difficulties clear up, and the 
learner leaps forward. Frequently he jumps a little further than 
his present powers justify, and then he falls back again ; but if so 
it is only for a short time. The sudden advance is the precursor of a 
general forward movement that is to follow. 

Meeting plateaus a common experience. — Every one 
has experienced these periods of sudden awakening, follow- 
ing upon discouraging periods of confusion. My own in- 
sight into philosophy has come to me in flashes, after months 
of baffled groping. Students have frequently told me that, 
they had worked for months .upon algebra and geometry 
before these subjects cleared up to them, and when they did 
clear up it was as a sudden, perspicuous revelation. The 
whole maze of confusion set itself at one stroke into order. 
Professor Starbuck relates a number of such instances of 
sudden awakening, from whom we quote : 



396 Human Conduct 

*'A little boy of four years old could not talk; he made queer 
sounds for different objects. All at once he began to talk and said 
his words plainly; he could soon say everything he heard." *'A 
little girl I knew well could not sing a note or carry a tune. Sud- 
denly, one day, she came in singing 'Sweet Marie' in sweet clear 
voice." *' I was very anxious to learn to play the piano, and would 
spend hours at the instrument. One day I suddenly found I could 
play a little waltz my sister had given me. This incited me to try 
another piece, and I found I could play that." " I tried to learn to 
mount and dismount a bicycle until it seemed to me there was no use 
in trying any more. All at once, one night, I found I could do both 
easily." ** I could not understand subtraction in algebra ; I could 
not even do the examples mechanically, I failed every day in it. 
Suddenly, one day while working alone, it dawned on me, and 
since then I have had no trouble. It is the easiest thing in algebra 
now." ** At fourteen I studied mensuration ; I thought I never 
could understand it, and felt quite discouraged. After hearing 
a pupil recite one day, the power to do it came like a flash, and it 
became my favorite study." 

Importance of the plateau. — Now these periods of appar- 
ently no progress — these plateaus in the curve of develop- 
ment — are psychologically as important as the transition 
periods. It is during them that the new insight won at the 
breaking period is made thoroughly one's own. For not 
only must the insight be won, but it must be completely 
assimilated. These levels, then, are the periods for drill, 
for action, for application. They are the periods, too, for 
the collection of the elements of experience which will be 
set to order in the next period of awakening. One should, 
therefore, not only welcome these transition periods, but 
.should also make the most of his periods of drag between. 
He should not allow himself to be discouraged by his appar- 
ent stand-still but should work persistently on, confident 
that his efforts, if serious and faithful, can not help having 
their effect. 

Valleys in emotional life. — This periodicity is even more 
characteristic of the emotional life. It is impossible to live 



Psychology of Discouragement 397 

on one continuous high level of emotion. The calm, dis- 
passionate life can be even tempered — can be always it- 
self — but the intense life must perforce oscillate from one 
extreme to another. When you look at a colored object for 
a while you can see the objective color, but when you look 
away an image of the same size but of exactly the opposite 
color looms up before your vision. The chemical processes 
in your eye, stimulated by the color, are obliged at length 
to reverse themselves until the eye can be restored to its 
normal equilibrium. And so it is in general. Whether 
the cause be the fatigue of the nerve centers and of the mus- 
cles involved, necessitating a shift of strain for recupera- 
tion, or w^hatever else it may be, any intense psychical state 
in time gives way to a counter state. So vivid excitement 
will be followed by equal depression. The life of lofty moun- 
tain tops will also be the life of dismal valleys. Whoever, 
in a moment of hopefulness, believes that he can ever after- 
wards live a life of emotional exaltation is certain to be soon 
sorely disappointed, and whoever, in a time of discourage- 
ment, anticipates that his whole career will be thus emo- 
tionally depressed will be, if he only waits, agreeably surprised. 
Fluctuations in love, — In love, engaging the emotions 
so strongly as it does, these fluctuations are most notable, 
and unfortunately most tragic in their consequences. It is 
an old saying that the course of true love never runs smoothly, 
and this is correct if by true love is meant intense love. 
The intense lover oscillates between exalted ardor and de- 
pression, between unbounded confidence and mad jealousy. 
And strangely, when he is in one of these extreme moods, 
he feels confident that he will remain in it forever, and com- 
mits himself to enterprises which it is not in accord with 
the laws of his nature to sustain. In consequence, the periods 
of reaction which follow are likely to be disconcerting, and to 
lead to misunderstandings and to imputations of insincerity. 
It would be better to acknowledge frankly to oneself that 



398 Human Conduct 

such relapses are natural and to be expected, and not allow 
oneself to be disturbed by them. 

In his semihumorous way Jerome K. Jerome says on this : 

I am afraid, dear Edwin and Angelina, you expect too much 
from love. You think there is enough of your little hearts to feed 
this fierce, devouring passion for all your long lives. Ah, young 
folk! don't rely too much upon that unsteady flicker. It will 
dwindle and dwindle as the months roll on, and there is no re- 
plenishing the fuel. You will watch it die out in anger and dis- 
appointment. To each it will seem that it is the other who is 
growing colder. Edwin sees with bitterness that Angelina no 
longer runs to the gate to meet him, all smiles and blushes ; and 
when he has a cough now she doesn't begin to cry, and putting her 
arms around his neck, say that she cannot live without him. The 
most she will probably do is to suggest a lozenge, and even that in 
a tone implying that it is the noise more than anything else she is 
anxious to get rid of. 

Poor little Angelina, too, sheds silent tears, for Edwin has 
given up carrying her old handkerchief in the inside pocket of his 
waistcoat. Both are astonished at the falling off of the other one, 
but neither sees their own change. If they did, they would not 
suffer as they do. They would look for the cause in the right 
quarter — in the littleness of poor human nature — join hands 
over their common failing, and start building their house anew 
on a more earthly and enduring foundation. 

Affection. — In love, as in habit formation and intel- 
lectual growth, one is, during his physiological and psycho- 
logical crises, lifted on to a new level, but in the common- 
place experiences that follow, this new inspiration, if it is 
to count for anything, must be built into one^s nature by 
little concrete acts. These plateaus, or valleys if you pre- 
fer, in the love curve, are the places for building up a perma- 
nent affection through little, thoughtful deeds of kindness 
and practical devotion not necessarily fired with the intensity 
of ardent passion. Jerome continues : , 

It is a cheerless hour for you both, when the lamp of love has 
gone out, and the fire of affection is not yet lit, and you have to 



Psychology of Discouragement 399 

grope about in the cold raw dawn of life to kindle it. God grant 
it catches light before the day is too far spent. Many sit shivering 
by the dead coals till night comes. . . . Love is too pure a light 
to bm*n long among the noisome gases that we breathe, but 
before it is choked out we may use it as a torch to ignite the cosy 
fire of affection. 

And, after all, that warming glow is more suited to our cold 
little back parlor of a world than is the burning spirit of love. Love 
should be the vestal fire of some mighty temple — some vast dim 
fane whose organ music is the rolling of the spheres. Affection 
will burn cheerfully when the white flame of love is flickered out. 
Affection is a fire that can be fed from day to day, and be piled up 
ever higher as the wintry years draw nigh. Old men and women 
can sit by it with their thin hands clasped, the little children can 
nestle down in front, the friend and neighbor has his welcome corner 
by its side, and even shaggy Fido and sleek Titty can toast their 
noses at the bars. 

Let us heap the coals of kindness upon that fire. Throw on 
your pleasant words, your gentle pressures of the hand, your 
thoughtful and unselfish deeds. Fan it with good-humor, patience, 
and forbearance. You can let the wind blow and the rain fall 
unheeded then, for your hearth will be warm and bright, and the 
faces round it will make sunshine in spite of the clouds within. 

Tragedies from despondency. — An overestimation of 
the significance of a temporarily despondent mood often 
leads to utterly foolish tragedies. Because they are for the 
moment hurt, people rashly break precious friendships. 
Because they are for the time disheartened, men take to 
drinking or commit other forms of injustice to themselves. 
Indeed almost every week one can read in the papers even 
such accounts as the following, clipped from a city paper : 

Disappointed at the inability of her mother to take her on a 
vacation this summer. Miss Mabel Jabes, thirty-four years old, 
swallowed poison on the porch of her home, 3143 F Street, this 
morning. She died without regaining consciousness an hour later 
in the Episcopal Hospital. 

Christian Miller, twenty-nine years old, Cedar and Cumber- 
land Streets, attempted suicide at Masquer Street and Susque- 



400 Human Conduct 

hanna Avenue last night by shooting himself in the head. He is 
in a critical condition at the St. Mary's Hospital. According to 
the police Miller has a sweetheart in the West. He received letters 
from her daily until a few days ago, it is said, when the missives 
stopped coming. Overcome by despair, he attempted suicide. 

niness, financial loss, injury to reputation, or some other 
form of discouragement often lead to the same foolish acts. 
One believes that because for the time the world is dark it will 
always remain so. Nothing of the sort will prove true. It 
is physiologically impossible that it should be true. Just 
as exaltation inevitably in time tones down, so does depres- 
sion tone up. It is the universal testimony that any sting 
will in time lose its poignancy. At the very first it makes 
the background for all consciousness, but after a little while 
recurs only at intervals, and in time is so faded out as to be 
no longer a biting sorrow, if it does not become indeed a 
positively pleasant mxcmory. This is especially true if one 
plunges into active life and meets the problem by substitution. 

Plateaus in moral conduct. — In moral conduct this same 
tendency toward rhythm is also evident. There are days 
when all the forces of our nature seem organized for mis- 
chief, and there are times when our better nature is in the 
lead. This is particularly true of the adolescent period — 
the high school age — when character is in the making and 
the two types of forces are battling for supremacy. As 
Professor Starbuck says : 

Youth is at the point of development at which it is beset on 
every side by liabilities of abnormal and pathological extremes. 
It is the point at which not only geniuses begin to develop, but also 
criminals ; not only persons of greatest spiritual insight, but like- 
wise those of extremest sensuality. 

Put good impulses to work. — In this contest between the 
two forces of our nature Jules Payot advises : 

When feeling surges up into consciousness (we are now only 
concerned with feelings that are favorable to our purpose), we must 



Psychology of Discouragement 401 

seize the occasion to launch our bark. We must take advantage 
of our good moments as if the voice of God were calHng us, to make 
good resolutions. Whatever may be the accompanying feeling 
which invades the soul, let us immediately make use of it for our 
work. Have we heard of the success of a comrade, and has this 
whipt up our wavering will ; if so, then let us get quickly to work ! 
Quick, let us courageously clear out of the way the task which has 
been tormenting us for the last few days, because we were unable 
to make up our mind to get right at it and attack it, and also unable 
to get rid of the idea that we ought to do this, so much that it has 
worn upon us like remorse. If to-day, after reading this, we feel 
a sentiment of the dignity and nobility of work, then let us im- 
mediately take up our pen ! Or, more simply, if we experience 
this feeling of intellectual and physical vigor that makes work 
pleasant, then let us get right down to our task. These favorable 
moments must be used in order to form strong habits, and to taste, 
in such a way as to preserve the flavor, for as long a time as pos- 
sible, the manly joys of productive and fruitful work, and the 
pride of self-mastery. 

The feeling, on ebbing away, will have left a beneficent de- 
posit in the form of a stronger habit of work, the memory of the 
joys which one has experienced, and of energetic resolutions. 

Put had impulses off. — And, on the negative side, guard 
against rushing rashly into acts out of harmony with your 
better nature. When your ideals go on a romp, when im- 
pulses incongruent with your better nature press for ex- 
pression, just hold on to the old ropes for a moment. Rather 
than do something which you may regret, postpone it until 
just a little later. If it needs to be done, it can be done 
just as well to-morrow. To-morrow you can approach it with 
a clearer brain, and can better determine whether or not 
you really wish to do it. If it is really the right thing to 
do, it will appear equally right to-morrow ; if it is but the 
product of a temporary mood — a lapse from your better 
self — to-morrow you will be your better self again. Know- 
ing so much as we now do about the fluctuation of mood, it is 
a safe rule for us to do to-day what our better impulses prompt 
us to do, but to postpone until to-morrow, for further reflec- 



402 Human Conduct 

tion, what we know to be out of harmony with our custom- 
ary ideals. 

Build habits. — And here, too, again use the plateaus 
in your course for making thoroughly your own the achieve- 
ments of your mountain-top experiences. Character is 
not made by your sudden flights of ambition and idealism, 
nor by avoiding the perpetration of acts incongruent with 
your ideals, but by the tedious monotony of one little right 
act after another. Act out what you know^ to be your ideals, 
whether or not these are at the moment clothed with emo- 
tional warmth. By force of will and of habit keep yourself 
unswervingly by your post during these dreary periods of 
emotional and idealistic lethargy. The time will come 
when you will be your better self again, and when these 
commonplace activities will be the force to buoy you up 
upon the crest of a new wave of inspiration. 

In my boyhood days on the farm it used to be customary, 
when a barn was being built, for all the neighbors to get 
together on a certain day and assist at the '^ raising ^^ — 
that is, the fitting into place of the large timbers which made 
up its major framework. This was a great day in the build- 
ing — a spectacular day — - but those long hours during which 
these timbers were being prepared and during which the 
small laths which held these firmly in place, and which fin- 
ished the structure, were being nailed on, were certainly 
equally essential. The periods of awakening in growth are 
like these ^^ raisings '^ of the barns. They are great periods, 
inspiring periods, to be welcomed with open heart and made 
the most of. But, in the nature of the case, they can not 
come every day, and during the intervals between them it 
is your business to pick up your hammer and your three- 
penny nails and tack on the little laths to give stability 
and value to the proud framework — to do, that is, the 
little insignificant and even irksome tasks which can grind 
these large ideals into firm and lasting habits. 



Psychology of Discouragement 403 

Religious conversion. — But the most cataclysmic de- 
velopment is in the religious life. It is true that there are 
some persons whose temperament and training are such 
that they grow up gradually into the religious life, but in 
the majority of lives there are pronounced breaking points, 
preceded b}^ periods of stress and strain. These breaking 
points are called conversion, and the normal time for them 
to come is in the adolescent period — between twelve and 
twenty years of age. In fact the adolescent period is a 
period of transition in every way. It is the period when 
physically one changes from childhood to adulthood ; so- 
cially from a self-centered animal to a creature interested 
in the welfare of his fellows ; ethically from a person directed 
through external authority by his elders to an individual 
capable of directing himself ; mentally from a formal memo- 
rizer to an independent thinker ; and religiously from a mere 
church attendant to a worshiper experiencing the depth of 
religious emotion. Such rapid and thoroughgoing transi- 
tion could not help being tragic. Just as the boy is likely 
to experience ^' growing pains, '^ so he is almost sure now to go 
through periods of emotional storm and stress. And the 
breaking point in these storm and stress periods — conver- 
sion — is the period at which the confusion of his rehgious 
world is set in order, just as we have seen, from the above 
illustrations, one^s intellectual problems may, at certain 
points, suddenly and unexpectedly clear up. 

Time of conversion. — The distribution of conversions as to 
age has been carefully studied by a number of psychologists, 
and they all agree that the normal period for it is adoles- 
cence. Professor Starbuck, one of the early investigators, 
sums up the matter in this way : 

Conversion does not occur with the same frequency at all 
periods of life. It belongs almost exclusively to the years between 
ten and twenty-five. The number of instances outside that range 
appear few and scattered. That is, conversion is a distinctly 



404 Human Conduct 

adolescent phenomenon. It is a singular fact also that within 
this period the conversions do not distribute themselves equally 
among the years. In the rough we may say that they begin to 
occur at seven or eight years, and increase in number gradually to 
ten or eleven, and then rapidly to sixteen ; rapidly decline to 
twenty, and gradually fall away after that, and become rare after 
thirty. One may say that if conversion has not occurred before 
twenty, the chances are small that it will ever be experienced. 

But our reading is yet too rough. Within adolescence it 
appears that such awakenings are much more likely to take place 
at some years than at others, and that the preference of years 
varies greatly with sex. The event comes earlier, in general, 
among the females than among the males, most frequently at 
thirteen and sixteen. Among the males it occurs most often at 
seventeen, and immediately before and after that year. 

Religious interest to he cultivated when ripe, — It is plain, 
then, that the youth can not afford to turn a deaf ear 
to the call of religion in his teens. We have earlier seen 
that any instinct, if inhibited at the critical time, will pass 
away, but if allowed to function will remain as a habit, and 
this law is no less true of the religious instinct than of others. 
If the youth, by stajdng away from religious influences, or 
by deliberately hardening himself to them, fights his way 
through, the period of instinctive religious interest without 
yielding to it, his religious life at a later age will be at the 
best shallow, if indeed he can ever bring himself to any in- 
terest in it whatever. On the other hand if, when the nat- 
ural interest awakens, he gratifies it in a normal way, and 
keeps himself during his youth in a healthy religious atmos- 
phere, he will grow up natural^ into a strong and whole- 
some religious life. The period of conversion is to be ac- 
cepted with the same openness as the periods of rapid ele- 
vation and expansion in the process of habit formation and 
of intellectual progress which we discussed above. It is 
to be welcomed as one of those rare moments when human 
nature enables us to open our ears and our hearts to the 
voice and the presence of God, and to get that bequest of 



Psychology of Discouragement 405 

divine inspiration and revelation which must afford us guid- 
ance and momentum in the manifold activities which make 
up our daily lives. 

Crises not to he forced. — But if cataclysmic transitions in 
the religious life are not to be suppressed, neither are they 
to be forced. Sudden conversions belong to persons of cer- 
tain temperaments, but not to others. One of the most 
important discoveries of modern psychology has been that 
of the great individual differences between persons. And 
these differences hold no less of religious experience than of 
any other phase of life. Yet, unfortunately, religious 
leaders — especially evangelists — have too often insisted 
that all men should have just their type of experience. 
Being of an emotional temperament their conversion has 
usually been of the violent, cataclysmic nature, and they 
lead young people to believe that they can not enter the reli- 
gious life except through such eruption. In consequence 
many a person, anxious to do his part in the Kingdom of 
God, has been led to force his religious emotions, or even 
to resort to a certain more or less conscious hypocrisy. 
As a result his religious nature has suffered infinite harm 
instead of good, and not a few persons have been alienated 
from the church throughout life in consequence of such un- 
fortunate affectation. 

Of course, every one who enters the Kingdom of God 
must be born again, must lay aside his selfish animal nature 
and become a child of God, must face about from that self- 
centeredness which characterizes his childhood life and unself 
himself, but whether or not he should do this through one 
great emotional cataclysm is a matter to be determined 
wholly by his individual temperament. Professor Ames 
says : 

The differences of temperament pertain largely to suscepti- 
bility to suggestion and to automatisms. It is of great importance 
historically that the apostle Paul and St. Augustine belonged to 



4o6 Human Conduct 

the type for which the extreme form of emotional, dramatic con- 
version is possible. Their personal experience has been regarded 
as of superior value because it has been assumed uncritically that 
their moral characters and achievements were determined by the 
manner of their conversion. But when it is recognized that Paul 
was probably a neurotic, and that Augustine was a sensualist with 
a highly developed nervous temperament, it becomes apparent 
that there were very special individual reasons for their dramatic 
conversions. It also appears that the forms of their conversions 
are accidental, and not essential in spiritual development. The 
attempts to induce that type of experience among all classes of 
persons have failed, and such failures have proved not the depravity 
of the recalcitrant, unresponsive persons, but the one-sided and 
abnormal character of the cases set up as the standard. 

Desirability of regular groioth. — Certainly the experi- 
ence of many truly religious men shows that a more gradual 
type of conversion is no less a true one. Edward Everett 
Hale, whose experience is paralleled by that related by many 
other unquestionably religious persons, says of his develop- 
ment : 

I observe, with profound .regret, the religious struggles which 
come into many biographies, as if almost essential to the formation 
of the hero. I ought to speak of these, to say that any man has 
an advantage, not to be estimated, who is born, as I was, into a 
family where the religion is simple and rational ; who is trained in 
the theory of such a religion, so that he never knows, for an hour, 
what these religious or irreligious struggles are. I always knew 
God loved me, and I was always grateful to him for the world he 
placed me in. I always liked to tell him so, and was always glad 
to receive his suggestion to me. To grow up in this way saves boy 
or youth from those battles which men try to describe and can not 
describe, which seem to use up a great deal of young life. I can 
remember perfectly that, when I was coming to manhood, the half 
philosophical novels of the time had a deal to say about the young 
men and maidens who were facing the **problem of life." I had no 
idea whatever what the problem of life was. To live with all my 
might seemed to me easy; to learn where there was so much to 
learn seemed pleasant and almost of course ; to lend a hand, if 
one had a chance, natural ; and if one did this, why he enjoyed 
life because he could not help it, and without proving to himself 



Psychology of Discouragement 407 

that he ought to enjoy it. I suppose that a skillful professor of 
the business could have prodded up my conscience, which is, I 
think, as sensitive as another's. I suppose I could have been made 
very wretched, and that I could have made others very wretched. 
But I was in the hands of no such professor, and my relations with 
the God whose child I am were permitted to develop themselves 
in the natural way. 

In fact, dramatic conversions are probably largely due to 
the fact that religious growth is somehow morbidly retarded 
until a breaking point is reached. Beneath the surface 
there is a constant but unconfessed growth toward the reli- 
gious life, but it is not permitted to express itself as rapidly 
as it matures. In consequence there is accumulated a strain 
which either, as a suppressed instinct, passes away by disso- 
lution, or breaks out at some time into open eruption. Cer- 
tainly such eruptions are better than the disappearance of 
the religious interest by dissolution, but it would seem far 
better still, if, as rapidly as religious impulses develop, 
they could express themselves — if, at periods of transition, 
one^s life could quietly open out into a larger range, and, 
during intervening periods of monotony, one could make 
these acquisitions of his moments of special communion and 
revelation his own through their clarification and applica- 
tion in practice. Starbuck conforms to a widely-held con- 
viction when he says on this point : 

It is doubtless the ideal to be striven after that the develop- 
ment during adolescence should be so even and symmetrical that 
no crisis would be reached, that the capacity for spiritual assimila- 
tion should be constantly equal to the demands that are made on 
consciousness. 

EXERCISES 

1. Have you observed ''plateaus" in the course of your own 
learning? Have you found any means of avoiding them? How 
would it be to give up work, or at least to slacken effort, while they 
last? What should be done? 

2. Friar Lawrence counsels Romeo to "love mildly; long love 
doth so." Discuss that advice. 



4o8 Human Conduct 

3. Some one has said : "The youth is distinguished by falling 
in love. If he is not in love with a maiden he is in love with love." 
Is it, or is it not, advisable for a youth to remain during youth 
**in love with love," associating with members of the opposite 
sex, but not allowing himself to become so entangled with any one 
that the breaking of friendship, inevitable in the case of most early 
attachments, may not cause an undue amount of pain? 

4. Is Jerome right in expecting more from "affection" than 
from "love" in making a couple permanently happy? What is 
the difference? 

5. What advice would you give to one driven to despair by some 
great disappointment? 

6. Do you find your impulses oscillating between good and bad ? 
Is the author's advice as to using good impulses and holding off 
bad ones correct and feasible? Why? 

7. What is the relative importance of inspiration and habit 
in character building? 

8. Is there any essential difference between a conversion which 
comes suddenly, and one which consists of so many stages in the 
awakening process as to seem practically a continuous growth? 
Do all churches emphasize equally the dramatic conversion? 



CHAPTER XXVIII 
THE STRONG MAN'S RELIGION 

Religion to be rightly interpreted. — A few years ago a 
prominent Chicago business man wrote and distributed, at 
considerable expense to himself and at no small risk to his 
reputation, a book on '' The Utility of All Sorts of Higher 
Schooling." In this he roundly condemned higher education 
as '^ a course of four years of social life at some university,'' 
consisting of '^ useless and extravagant frills and fads,'' 
and ^^ filling the head with a lot of impractical stuff." And 
doubtless there was much about higher education to justify 
the worthy gentleman's conclusions. Many instances of 
time wasted, or worse than wasted, as well as much " im- 
practical stuff " crammed into the heads of students, could 
be found. But this critic had unfairly taken higher educa- 
tion at its worst. Had he searched out its inner spirit, its 
hopes, its aspirations, and evaluated these his verdict would 
have been much more charitable. 

Now the same dual viewpoint may be taken with re- 
gard to religion, and before we commend it as a mark of 
strength to the seeker after the largest life we must protect 
ourselves against being interpreted as urging a type of weak- 
ness and of selfishness masquerading under the name of 
religion, in the same way in which the '^ fads and frills " 
and the ^^ four years of social life " sometimes masquerade 
under the name of higher education. 

Perverted religion. — The abuse to which we refer is the 
effort to use God for selfish ends, and religion as a prudential 
consideration. Not a few persons calling themselves reli- 

409 



4IO Human Conduct 

gious, taking advantage of the privilege which they under- 
stand to be guaranteed to them to ask what they will and 
receive it, would have the Divine Ruler of the Universe 
swing the whole world around their petty whims. If they 
want bread, they will pray for it, instead of earning it ; if 
they want rain, they will ask God to send it, while they idly 
wait ; if they want success in any enterprise, they will rely 
upon God to send it to them, just because they are bold 
enough to confidently expect him to do so. Their whole 
ambition, judging from their talk, is to measure out the 
^' mint and anise and cummin ^^ with such scrupulous care 
as to make sure of a life of sensuous pleasure hereafter. 

A prayer by Peer Gynt in Ibsen's play is typical, though 
in somewhat exaggerated form, of these requests from the 
Deity for selfish personal favors. It is uttered when his 
servants sail away with his ship, leaving him on shore : 

My brute beasts of friends — Do but hear me, Lord ! 

Since thou art so wise and so righteous — Judge ! 

It is I, Peter Gynt : 0, our Lord, give but heed : 

Hold thy hand over me. Father, or else I must perish ! 

Make them back the machine ! Make them lower the gig I 

Stop the robbers ! Make something go wrong with the rigging ! 

Hear me ! Let other folks' business he over ! 

The world can take care of itself for the time ! 

I'm blest if he hears me ! He's deaf as his wont is ! 

Here's a nice thing ! A god that is bankrupt of help ! 

Hist, I've abandoned the nigger plantation ! 

And missionaries I've exported to Asia ! 

Surely one good turn should be worth another ! 

Now it is just such perversion of rehgion that has tempted 
men to view it as a mark of weakness rather than of strength. 
It was such perversion that induced Holbach to contrast 
it unfavorably with reason, and Nietzsche to find the roots 
of Christianity in cowardice. But such individualistic 
self-seeking is not really religion, — has nothing in common 
with true religion. Indeed, it is the very opposite of genuine 



The Strong Man's Religion 411 

religion in its developed form. For religion can not be self- 
ish. In its very nature it must carry a man beyond his own 
skin — must unself him as a finite and isolated creature. 

Prayer and aspiration. — And so the prayer of Peer Gynt 
and of his analogues, while indeed exemplifying the spirit 
out of which prayer actually arose among savage peoples, 
represents by no means the noble spirit of prayer among a 
people of developed religious nature. '' Prayer/' as the 

poet has said, 

is the soul's sincere desire, 
Uttered or unexpressed, 

and, as such, expresses an intensity of ideal striving to which 
the petty self-seeking of the prudentially religious could 
never rise. For it is not when one is passive and indifferent 
that he prays. At such time he has no '^ heart's sincere 
desire.'' He has at most a ^^ Barkis-is-willin' " attitude 
toward the blessings which Heaven may roll down upon 
him, but not that mighty yearning which real prayer involves. 
On the other hand, when one is striving mightily for what 
he deems the right, and feels the need of a supplementation 
of his weak human powers, when there weighs down upon 
him such a tragic sense of the importance of his work that 
he feels the urgent necessity of greater might than his own 
to perform adequately that work, and when in this earnest- 
ness he turns to the Self that is greater than he and implores 
added strength for the task, it is then that he pours forth 
his heart in genuine prayer. 

It is therefore not the weak man who really prays. It is 
the strong man. It is the man who takes life seriously 
enough to care. It is the man of high ideals and of intense 
devotion to them. It is the man in whose life there well 
up torrents of energy and of ambition. It is the man who 
courageously takes hold of large enterprises and who, instead 
of feebly giving up when confronted by difficulties, presses 
forward and commands all available forces to carry him 



412 Human Conduct 

through. It is the man of mighty will alone who thus, in 
a determined spirit, along with God, carries through his 
enterprises which others would give up. 

Prayer the essence of religion. — It is in such prayer 
that the essence of religion consists. Prayer, says Saba- 
tier, is : 

a commerce, a conscious and willed relation into which the 
soul in distress enters with the mysterious power on which it feels 
that it and its destiny depend. This commerce with God is realized 
by prayer. Prayer is religion in act — that is to say, real religion. 
. . . Religion is nothing if it is not the vital act by which the 
whole spirit seeks to save itself by attaching itself to its principle. 
This act is prayer, by which I mean, not an empty utterance of 
words, nor the repetition of certain sacred formulas, but the move- 
ment of the soul putting itself into personal relation and contact 
with the mysterious power whose presence it feels, even before it 
is able to give it a name. Where this inward prayer is wanting 
there is no religion ; on the other hand, where this prayer springs 
up in the soul and moves it, even in the absence of all form and 
doctrine clearly defined, there is true religion, living piety. 

Religion and work. — So religion clusters about prayer, 
and prayer about work. Who works hardest prays hardest. 
Who will not earnestly work does not have the personal 
forcefulness to sincerely pray. But the prayer to which we 
refer need not be a rhetorical, nor even an articulate, one. 
It need not be separated in time or place from the task. 
One prays while he works when he goes into his task wdth 
a high, yearning idealism ; when he feels a sense of its vast- 
ness and opens his life to guidance and inspiration from 
above ; when he continually feels that it is but an incident 
in a vaster whole ; and when he tries to look upon it as he 
believes the Great Taskmaster does. It is in this way that 
the strong man obeys, by the very force of his lofty idealism, 
the command to ^^ pray without ceasing,'' for his prayer 
and his work make one indissoluble unity. Henry Ward 
Beecher says : 



The Strong Man^s Religion 413 

Therefore the man who bends over his bench may be as really 
worshiping God, fulfilling the will of God, and doing God's serv- 
ice, as he who bends over the altar. He who stands at the black- 
smith's forge may be as really rendering God service as he who 
reads from the Psalms and the Gospels. He who is rightly per- 
forming the duties of life is worshiping, if worship means render- 
ing acceptable service to God. 

One who is not slothful in business, one who gives the full 
activity of his nature to the things which concern him in the sphere 
where God has planted him, has his mind in that condition in which 
it will ever be in communion with God. 

The schoolboy's religion must lie in the duties of the school- 
boy. The sailor's religion must conform itself to the duties which 
are incumbent on the mariner. The merchant's religion must 
be found within the compass and bounds of commercial life. 
None of them are to be shirked. 

There is no place w^here God puts you where it is not your 
duty to turn round and say, '* How shall I perfume this place, and 
make it fragrant as the honeysuckle and the violet, and beautiful 
as the rose?" In this w^orld you are to perform the great duties 
of spiritual, moral, and physical life, in the place where you are. 

Exactitude, trustworthiness, where there is no eye but God's 
to see; the fulfilling of a sense of true Christian manhood in that 
which is disagreeable — these things constitute taking up the cross. 

Religion gives scope to work. — But work, done thus in 
the spirit of prayer, is transfigured. Through rehgion the 
strong man's work takes on the touch of infinity. With- 
out it he would look upon his task as a routine duty of the 
day ; but when he works as a conscious servant in the King- 
dom of God he sees his task as one aspect of the great and 
multiple endeavor by which the divine life is progressively 
embodied in the universe. Hence his life takes on such scope 
and dignity as can, by the vastness and seriousness of its 
challenge, make a big man. 

Morality and religion. — So here emerges the difference 
between mere morality and religion. A man who is merely 
moral would be only prudentially so. He would live by 
the maxim that '^ Honesty is the best policy. '^ But most 



414 Human Conduct 

men are moral on a higher level. They would be honorable 
even though they knew that it did not pay. They would 
be so out of a compelling sense of loyalty. They feel that 
somehow their conduct touches a reality much deeper 
than that of the present moment, and that it behooves 
them to maintain the dignity and integrity of this deeper 
reality. And hence they are more than moral ; they are 
really religious. For it is only necessary that men who are 
moral on the plane of loyalty instead of prudence, should 
trace out the real implications involved in their attitude to 
find that they are already working in the service of God. For 
this larger truth and honor, which they are maintaining, be- 
long to God. They are working with him but not knowing 
it, and by this ignorance they are needlessly cramping their 
lives. They are working in a large service without conscious 
and systematic drafts upon the source from which dynamic 
force must come. VvT'hat they should do is to recognize 
consciously that they are sons of God, definitely align them- 
selves with him, and get that inspiration and sense of se- 
curity which can come from consciousness of service in the 
Kingdom of Heaven, and to which, by their essentially reli- 
gious attitude, they have all along been entitled. 

Faith and work. — Faith, which has ever been rightly held 
such an important part of religion, consists in just such 
attitude. Faith is not blind credulity. It does not consist, 
as one boy thought, in trying to believe what you know is not 
true. It has really nothing to do with the mental accept- 
ance or rejection of dogma. One can have sublime faith 
and yet never have put his theology into words, or, on the 
other hand, can give strenuous assent to every article in the 
creeds and yet be absolutely lacking in genuine faith. Faith 
in God consists in the ever present conviction that while 
'' God's in his Heaven alFs right with the world '^ ; that 
this moment's task is a bit of his larger work ; and that, if 
it is done at one's best, it will be so supplemented and taken 



The Strong Man^s Religion 415 

care of as to bring forth fruit in due season. Faith in Christ 
lies in a vital appreciation of his message and of the ideals 
which he proclaimed, and in an inspiring certainty that 
these ideals must and will wdn out through time. Faith 
in the Kingdom of God rests in an overpowering sense of 
the strength of its claim, in a feeling of its worth, and in a 
passion that it shall triumph. Such faith is evidently not 
passive. It is not the possession of the person who sits 
down and waits, confident that some one else will bear the 
whole cross. It can be the possession only of the mighty 
worker, for whoever has such overwhelming sense of the 
value of the cause in which he has faith, and of the impor- 
tance that it should be speedily more largely realized, will, 
by his inner passion, be of necessity propelled forward into 
strenuous battle for the triumph of that cause. It is by 
such loyal, aggressive attitude, and not by verbal confes- 
sion, that one shows his faith. The Apostle James writes : 

What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, 
and have not works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister 
be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto 
them. Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled ; notwithstanding 
ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; 
what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, 
being alone. Yea, a man may say, thou hast faith and I have 
works : show me thy faith without works, and I will show thee my 
faith by my works. 

Religious doubt. — Normal for adolescents. — This brings 
us to the problem of religious doubt. It has unfortunately 
been the custom to tie up religion with the blind intellectual 
acceptance of certain authoritative creeds, and to insist 
that everything of these creeds be taken or none. The re- 
sult has, with strong young men and women, usually been 
the choice of the latter alternative. They are almost sure 
to come, at some time, to the position of Mrs. Alving, in 
Ibsen's ''Ghosts,'' when she says to Pastor Manders: 



41 6 Human Conduct 

It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. 
I wanted only to pick at a single knot, but when I had got that un- 
done the whole thing ravelled out. And then I understood that 
it was all machine sewn. 

In fact investigation has shown that practically all adoles- 
cents go, in their teens, through just such periods of doubt, 
in which they strongly revolt against many of the doctrines 
which they had been taught to regard as fundamental. 
Professor Starbuck says : 

Doubt seems to belong to youth as its natural heritage. More 
than two thirds of the persons whose experience we are studying 
passed through a period sometime, usually during adolescence, 
when religious authority and theological doctrines were taken up 
and seriously questioned. To be exact, 53 per cent, of the women 
and 79 per cent, of the men have had a pretty distinct period of 
doubt, which was generally violent and intense. In Dr. Burnham's 
**Study of Adolescence,*' three fourths of his cases passed through 
such a period. 

Doubt no sin, — Nor is doubt morally reprehensible, 
as it is often represented to be. To doubt honestly is no 
sin. In fact, as the poet tells us, 

There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in haK the creeds. 

Professor Holmes says: 

Between thirteen and nineteen the boy disappears and the 
man emerges. The first mark, then, of this mental change will 
be skepticism. Skepticism itself has a negative and a positive 
side. The first stage demands that the boy shall forget his boy- 
hood gods ; to him they are become the idols lent by others. They 
have served their little day and must pass out. Now the time 
has come for the erection of his own one true God, his very own 
and his very true deity. Equally is this true in the moral world. 
Whereas as a child he has dutifully accepted the moral system of 
his father, or mother, or teachers without question, he now begins 
to think for himself. . . . Once he was quite satisfied to be told 
a thing was wrong. . . . Now the statement that a thing is wrong 
is only an irritant that brings forth innumerable questions. . . . 



The Strong Man^s Religion 417 

If he is ever to have a real self, or a real morality, or a real re- 
ligion he must go through the process of clearing the ground from 
all tangled rubbish of his past. If in the place of the old a new 
temple is not erected that is the fault of his teachers. . . . The 
truth we have doubted the most and fought the hardest, when last 
it overcomes us, oecomes the surest truth we possess. The world's 
greatest men of faith have come from the ranks of its most stubborn 
skeptics. 

And Professor Starbuck still more emphatically says: 

The prevalence of religious doubt and storm and stress seems 
to be the result of natural selection. Those persons have been 
chosen out as most fit to exist who do not take things simply on 
authority, but who gain for themselves a rational hold on truth. 
Nothing is really understood at first hand until it has been called 
up into consciousness, and then worked over into experience. As 
childhood is the time for the acquisition of good habits through 
imitation and conformity, so nature has made another wise pro- 
vision by which each person may not only comprehend the best 
the race has produced, but bring to it his or her bit of improve- 
ment. Adolescence is the time for those divergences from con- 
ventional types which enlarge the range of human wisdom and 
experience. 

Douht should not be stifled. — Doubt should not, then, be 
prematurely stifled. One should courageously fight his 
way through it to firm rational ground. Of course this 
will inevitably involve a tragic stirring of the depths of one^s 
life, a period of bitterness and of alienation, but these are 
the birth pangs by which alone a strong religious person can 
be born. If doubts are irrationally stifled they do not pass 
away. They lurk within and fester there or break out 
later, by way of substitution, in a narrow and pathetic reli- 
gious fanaticism. Professor Starbuck says on this point : 

We have scarcely outgrown the conception, especially in 
ecclesiastical circles, that to doubt is sin. There are several in- 
stances in the records we are studying in which, when honest ques- 
tionings have occurred during late childhood or youth, they have 
been hushed by well-meaning parents or teachers. The result is 
usually a weakling who can not grapple with the more serious 
2 E 



41 8 Human Conduct 

matters of life, or a person in whom the normal currents of life 
are dammed up only to have them break out more violently at 
some later time. It should be seen that doubts are part of a de- 
velopment which, given certain temperaments, are inevitable, 
and which are normal and natural if the personaHty is to attain 
its highest possibilities. 

Phil Goodrich, one of the characters in '^ The Inside of 
the Cup/' relates a typical experience when he says : 

I have never, perhaps, been overburdened with intellect, but 
the time arrived nevertheless when I began to think for myself. 
Some of the older boys went once, I remember, to the rector of 
the school — a dear old man — and frankly stated our troubles. 
To use a modern expression he "stood pat" on everything. I do 
not say it was a consciously criminal act — he probably saw no 
other way out himself. At any rate he made us all agnostics at 
one stroke. 

It is only, then, as one comes to stand on his own feet 
that he can be really a strong son of God. 

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who 
would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name 
of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at 
last sacred but the integrity of yoiu- own mind. Absolve you to 
yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world," said Emer- 
son, the herald of the gospel of youth. ** Insist on yourself; never 
imitate." ** To thine own self be true," are the wholesome sentences 
that have called many a slumbering youth into possession of him- 
self, and set him into the w^ay which leads to strong and beautiful 
manhood. 

Doubt seldom involves permanent break. — And yet experi- 
ence has abundantly proved that doubt, when completely 
worked out, does not involve the radical break with tradi- 
tional belief that at first it seemed to threaten. One comes 
back after his circuit to much the same doctrines with which 
he started, but with an infinitely richer meaning in them. 
He is like the man who restlessly leaves his home and goes 
out to ^'do'^ the world, but who after a while comes back 



The Strong Man^s Religion 419 

to the old place and the old loves, though with a poise and 
a mellowness that he could not have had apart from his 
wanderings. Professor Royce tells us, regarding his ethical 
beliefs, 

I myself have spent my life in revising my opinions. And yet, 
whenever I have most carefully revised my moral standards, I am 
always able to see, upon reviewing my course of thought, that at 
best I have been finding out, in some new light, the true meaning 
that was latent in old traditions. 

And this experience is still truer of religious wanderings. 

Professor Shaler, for example, says that it was a more pro- 
found grasp of science itself that brought him back from an early 
excursion into religious negations. . . . Similarly, Romanes, 
who made the entire circuit from belief to unbelief and back again 
to Christian faith, never abandoned his early ideals, but only 
corrected them by a more rigorous analysis of scientific procedure, 
and enlarged them by his growing experience of life. 

One must, it seems, strongly react against a situation 
before he can adequately adjust himself to it. In this way 
he sets it over against himself and thoroughly studies it. 
And out of this study there comes a higher type of under- 
standing and a more intelligent and sympathetic adjust- 
ment than could have been realized without such period of 
alienation. It seems that one's course must be from a low 
type of union with a situation, through an alienation from 
it, and back to a higher type of union with it. 

Youth inclined to he too radical. — Hence in youth one is 
not unlikely to be too little appreciative of the institutions 
and beliefs which he finds current. As Professor Coe says : 

With one's first taste of intellectual independence, one is apt 
to fancy that the old world is a crude affair, which young men like 
oneself must make over before it will amount to much. Such self- 
projection is natural to the young man's stage of growth. He him- 
self is passing out of a child's world into a man's world, and the 
subjective experience is so absorbing as to color all he sees. He 
beholds two worlds, an old one and a new one, and the whole mean- 



420 Human Conduct 

ing of things appears to be that the old should give place to the 
new. The world must move with him. If it does not he is vexed. 
He frets at the apparent immobihty of thought ; he chafes at the 
indifference of men to his vision. His visions are not false, but 
they contain only a part of the spectral colors. To see things in 
the white light of truth, he must acquire the historical sense. He 
must learn that he himself, with his ideals, is a product of this old 
world. Incomplete as it is, too, this world is made up of the strati- 
fied ideals of other young men who, in the vast succession of the 
generations, have struggled for a future better than their own 
present. Thus ideas and institutions are ever old and young at 
the same time. Authority and individualism are inseparable. 
Authority is the individualism of the past, and individualism is an 
effort to make authority of the present. Choose one to the ex- 
clusion of the other, and you tie yourself to the merely temporal. 
What we need is to discern the eternal in the process of the ages, 
and the effort to do so is true allegiance to authority. 

So one does well not to make too much of his doubts. 
One should promise himself that he will give them a complete 
hearing, but he should be equally determined that that 
hearing should be patient and rational. Hence one must 
postpone decision until he has had ample opportunity to 
think and read and learn. He is in no position to settle 
the matter finally until he has made a thorough study of 
science, of history, of philosophy, and of religion. But in 
the meantime he can safely hold on a little longer to the old 
formulae. They have served for thousands of years, and 
they can serve him until he has had time to soberly mature 
better ones. And when he has had this time he is almost 
sure, anyway, to come back to those same formulae, only 
conceived in a more spiritual way. 

Three characteristics. — Religion needs dogma. — For re- 
ligious thought must have three characteristics, all of which 
the preceding satisfies. In the first place it must make itself 
articulate in some sort of theology. A religion without any 
definite doctrine would be just like concepts without names 
to tag them, and we have seen that such ideas, not ^^ nailed 



The Strong Man^s Religion 421 

down and held fast ^^ by words, are almost certain to evapo- 
rate. If religious conviction is to be strong and steady it 
must have its backbone in some adequate articulate form of 
expression. Says M. Sabatier : 

By suppressing Christian dogma you would suppress Chris- 
tianity; by discarding all religious doctrine you would destroy 
religion. How many great and eternal things there are which 
never exist, for us, in a pure and isolated state I All the forces 
of nature are in this case. Thought, in order to exist, must in- 
carnate itself in language. Words can not be identical with thought, 
but they are necessary to it. The hero in the romance, who was 
said to be unable to think without speaking was not so ridiculous 
as was once supposed, for that hero was everybody. The soul 
only reveals itself to us by the body to which it is united. Who has 
ever seen life apart from living matter? It is the same with the 
religious life and the doctrines and rites in which it manifests itself. 
A religious life which did not express itself would neither know itself 
nor communicate itself. It is therefore perfectly irrational to talk 
of a religion without dogma and without worship. Orthodoxy is 
a thousand times right as against rationalism or mysticism, when 
it proclaims the necessity for a church of formulating its faith into 
a doctrine, without which religious consciousnesses remain con- 
fused and undiscernable. 

Should use old symbolism. ■ — The second condition is that 
advanced religious thought must use the same method of 
expressing itself — the same symbolism — as the primitive, 
only it must put into this symbolism a broader and more 
spiritual meaning. For the future must build upon the 
past. If we would move men we must hitch up to their own 
viewpoint. This we long ago learned in our study of the 
psychology of tact. This, you remember, Jesus did when 
he proclaimed that he had not come to destroy the law but 
to fulfill it. The Mosaic doctrines he accepted, the Jewish 
theological terms he employed, but enriched them with a 
larger meaning. One must, in his religious thinking, use 
some sort of symbolism, and there is as much sanity in using 
that rich old symbolism of the past centuries as there is in 



422 Human Conduct 

communicating one^s thoughts in general through the language 
of one's native country. All we need to do, as our reli- 
gious conceptions enlarge, is to put into our old terms this 
bigger meaning, not to drop the terms. Says Sabatier, again : 

There is a latent contradiction in every symbolic idea. To get 
rid of this contradiction the understanding is obliged to eliminate 
from these ideas the sensible element which remains in them and 
renders them inadequate to their object. 

By progressive generalization and abstraction, reasoning 
attenuates the primitive metaphor ; it wears it down as on a grind- 
stone. But, when the metaphorical element has disappeared, 
the notion itself vanishes, in so far as it is a positive notion. There 
are mysterious lamps which only burn under an alabaster globe. 
You may thin away;the solid envelope to make it more trans- 
parent. But mind you do not break it ; for the flame inside will 
then go out and leave you in the dark. 

So with all our general ideas of the object of religion. When 
every metaphorical element is eliminated from them, they become 
simply negative, contradictory, and lose all real content. Such 
are our pure ideas of the infinite and the absolute. If you would 
give them a positive character, you must put into them some 
element of positive experience. . . . Born of the primitive symbols 
of religion, all our religious ideas will therefore necessarily keep 
their symbolic character to the end. 

Must he progressive. — And in the third place, true relir 
gious thought must be progressive. The spirit of religion it- 
self will remain eternally the same, but the theology through 
which it is expressed will necessarily continually widen the 
connotation of its terms to keep abreast of advancing thought. 

Says Professor Coe : 

The actual religion of any age or of any people cannot possibly 
be transferred to other peoples or other ages. 

**Each age must worship its own thought of God, 
More or less earthy, clarifying still 
With subsidence continually of the dregs ; 
Nor saint nor sage could fix immutable 
The fluid image of the unstable Best, 
Still changing in their very hands that wrought." 



The Strong Man^s Religion 423 

There is accordingly a sense in which we may say that religion 
needs to adjust itself to the men of every new generation. This 
is only another way of saying that each generation must be re- 
ligious for itself; that religion, being a vital process, is incapable 
of being handed down, like houses and lands, from father to son. 
Abraham could not possibly have communed with God in just 
the way that the Apostle John did, as, on the other hand, John 
would hardly have called a man religious who followed merely the 
ideas and practices of Abraham. 

Religion does not come down from heaven as a finished thing to 
which men must adjust themselves : rather it arises through their 
own inner impulses and longings ; these are instruments whereby 
the Father prevents men from being contented until they come into 
communion with him. Proceeding thus, from within outward, 
religion requires adjustment as continual as life itself. A develop- 
ing humanity implies a developing religion. Faith must ever 
make new discoveries of its own essential wealth, and of its inherent 
adaptability to the whole of developing human nature. 

Religion and strength. — Now when we understand reli- 
gion in this broad sense it is plain that no man can be at 
his strongest without it. The weak may be theological, 
but only the strong can be genuinely religious, nor can any 
man be his whole true self who does not command, as a rein- 
forcement of his life, the infinite Power and Wisdom of the 
Universe which is standing ready to work through every 
man who is willing to open his life to it. It is, indeed, this 
infinite Power, whether one knows it or not, that prompts 
and sustains all worthy endeavor. Says Bedloe Hubbell, 
in ^'The Inside of the Cup '' : 

Now comes Hodder with what I sincerely believe to be the key. 
He compels men like me to recognize that our movements are not 
merely moral but religious. Religion, as yet unidentified, is the 
force behind these portentous stirrings of politics in our country, 
from sea to sea. He aims, not to bring the church into politics, 
but to make her the feeder of these movements. Men join them 
to-day from all motives, but the religious is the only one to which 
they may safely be trusted. 



424 Human Conduct 

And hence our age — earnest and virile as it is — is really 
religious perhaps beyond any previous one. In its earnest 
endeavor for personal, political, social, and industrial good, 
it is struggling to bring to completion that ideal state of 
mutual interest and cooperation which Jesus called the King- 
dom of Heaven. Men do less talking in theological terms 
than they once did. It is harder to get them out to church 
than formerly. But there is a higher political and social 
idealism, a purer morality, a more earnest spirit of coopera- 
tion and fellow-feeling, than in any previous age, and this 
spirit is the external expression of a deep and vital religious 
impulse, though seldc^m recognized as such. 

A complete self must he religious. — We have been all along 
seeking to know how one can be really and consistently strong. 
Our past twelve chapters have been contributing toward the 
conclusion, but here we swdng that conclusion out to its 
widest boundaries. The strong self must be the complete 
self, and the complete self is the religious self, working with 
the might with which only an avowed son of God can work 
in our present earnest, and therefore religious, society. 
Says Coe : 

We are all religious, but some are not religious enough. Some 
are neglecting to give this deepest self the means of self-expression. 
Others are half-hearted or one-sided. Some prefer the lov/er, 
merely particular, self, with its bounded horizon. It remains for 
such persons voluntarily to turn their attention to this factor of 
consciousness so as to make clear what is otherwise obscure, to 
make complete what is otherwise fragmentary, and to choose such 
ends in life as satisfy this inevitable God-consciousness. We can 
choose to listen to the inner voice and obey it, or by choosing not 
to listen, we can blunt our sense to it. 

Raligious work and culture have the task of developing this 
sense of God until it becomes the commanding factor of the life. 
We have not to ask men to take into their lives something foreign 
to their nature. Our invitation is rather this: *'Be your whole 
self. Be completely in earnest with your intellectual sincerity, 
with your conscientiousness, with your love of fellowmen, with 



The Strong Mart's Religion 425 

your aspiration for all that is true and beautiful and good, and you 
will find that a sense of God is the moving spirit of the whole." 

Some among us are confused, timid, and non-committal be- 
cause they do not clearly see how being religious is different from 
simply living a good life. Others are waiting for some special, 
phenomenal revelation which shall convey a message not other- 
wise obtainable. All such persons are like the bird and the fish 
in the poem. 

*'0h, where is the sea?" cried the fish, 
and 

**0h, where is the air?" cried the bird! 

Let such men know that the religious experience is not something 
different from living a good life, but is just living it more abundantly. 
It is the inmost being of such a life. Let them know that we have 
not got to go up into the heavens to bring God down, or into the 
depth to bring him up. He is very nigh us. "In him we live and 
move and have our being." What we need is not an infusion of 
something that ever was totally outside of us, but a complete 
development of what is already within us. God has not left us 
without a witness of himself in our very members. Whoever 
sincerely approves anything that is worthy of approval, whoever 
is touched by the true, the beautiful, or the good, has within him 
a germ of the worship of God. What is demanded of us is such 
a repentance of all that is mean, half-hearted, and fragmentary as 
wuU let that germ grow toward its source as the trees grow toward 
the sun. We must permit the religious function of our natures to 
receive God and to rest in him. We must give it a chance to exr 
press itself. We must, finally, obey its dictates until, like the 
leaven of the parable, it leavens the whole lump of our life. 

If some one should ask, "But how can I be sure that this which 
seems to be the voice of God can be trusted?" the answer is still 
the same, "Live a complete life." Worship is so wrought into the 
fiber of our minds that we need only come to ourselves to find 
God. . . . 

It is not improbable that, as the years go by, men will rest 
more and more calmly upon this assumption. There can be no 
higher destiny or duty for us than just to be our whole selves. 
Expressed in terms of theology, this is nothing more than experi- 
ence of the immanent God. It is at once faith and sight. For 
the practical effect of faith is that we find ourselves at home where 
we are by assuming that God is there with us. And what more 



426 Human Conduct 

can seeing do? What we need, and what we are coming to find, 
is the God within the commonplace. 

"From Horeb's bush the Presence spoke 
To earlier faiths and simpler folk ; 
But now each bush that sweeps our fence 
Flames with the awful Immanence." 

EXERCISES 

1. Has one, or has one not, a right to pray for anything which 
is of value to him at the expense of others? For what is of value 
to him at the expense of the uniformity of nature? 

2. Is it true that genuine prayer grows out of idealism and 
expresses the strong man's yearning to succeed in his work? 

3. Which do you believe is central in religion, the spirit of 
prayer or the observance of ceremony? What is the place of 
ceremony ? 

4. What is the relation of religion to one's daily duties? 

5. Why is not morality alone enough to complete a man's life? 
What is there about religion which mere morality lacks? 

6. Do you beheve it is wrong to doubt ? Did not the religious 
reformers of the past become useful to the world just because 
they did doubt what others accepted? But can one afford to 
stop with merely negative conclusions? 

7. What is the value of a period of doubt if one comes back, 
after long and frank meditation, to essentially the same doctrines 
as those from which he started, as many men do? 

8. Why should the church not nurture reverence, idealism, 
and fraternalism, but avoid entirely any articulate theology? 

9. Why should the religious reformer, in attempting to express 
religious doctrines in such a way as to accord with modern thought, 
not drop entirely the old symbolism, and adopt a new one taken 
from the technical terms of modern science? 

10. Are changes in theology and changes in religion the same 
thing? Explain. 



The Strong Man^s Religion 427 

MINIMUM LIST OF BOOKS FOR COLLATERAL READING 

Angell, "Psychology," Holt. 

Betts, "The Mind and Its Education," Appleton. 

CoE, "Religion of a Mature Mind," Revell. 

CoLviN and Bagley, "Human Behavior," Macmillan. 

Creighton, "Introductory Logic," Macmillan. 

GuLicK (Jewett), "Control of Body and Mind," Ginn. 

Halleck, "Psychology and Psychic Culture," American. 

Hyde, "Practical Ethics," Holt. 

James, "Psychology, Briefer Course," Holt. 

James, "Talks to Teachers on Psychology, etc.," Holt. 

KiTsoN, "How to Use Your Mind," Lippincott. 

MacCunn, "The Making of Character," Macmillan. 

Mackenzie, "Manual of Ethics," Hinds and Noble. 

Marden, "Pushing to the Front," "Success," "Every Man a 

King, etc.," Success Company. 
Payot, "Education of the Will," Funk and Wagnalls. 
Royce, "Philosophy of Loyalty," Macmillan. 
Wilson, "Talks to Young People on Ethics," Scribners. 
Wilson, "Making the Most of Ourselves," McClurg. 



INDEX 



Apperception : chapters I-VI ; de- 
fined, iO-11; double, 15 ff. ; diffi- 
culty of balanced, 24 ff . ; and 
stupidity, 58-60 ; value of, from 
many angles, 23 ; and conserva- 
tism, 65 ; emotion as barrier to, 
26-7 ; and progress, 62-4 ; and 
conception, 91 ; and attention, 
239. 

Association of ideas : 162-6 ; 169- 
70; 178 ff. 

Attention : and memory, 174 ; and 
conduct, 149 ; chapter XVI ; con- 
centration of, 233 ff. ; kinds, 
235 ff.; range, 247 ff. ; divided, 
248 ; and habit formation, 260-9 ; 
and will, 278. 

Avocation, 358. 

Brain: structure of, 166-9, 171. 

Character : and will, chapter XVIII ; 
result of continuous growth, 227 ff . ; 
as limitation to freedom, 283 ff . 

Concepts : chapter VIII ; and ab- 
stract thinking, 89-90 ; defined, 
90-1 ; and perception, 91 ; value 
of, 92-4 ; making clear and ade- 
quate, 94-105. 

Conscience, 71. 

Conservatism: 64-70, 74, 116-7, 421. 

Contrast, 104-6. 

Conversion : and continuity of 
growth, 273 ; religious, 403 ; time 
of occurrence, 403. 

Culture : personal, 359 

Daydreaming, 211, 212 ff., 221. 
Definition, 99-103. 
Discouragement, chapter XXVII. 
Division, 103-4. 
Doubt, 289, 415 ff., 420. 
Dress : and personality, 157 ; and 
strength, chapter XIX. 



Emotion : and balanced apper- 
ception, 26 ff. ; as sentinel, 70 ; 
and ideals, 225 ; and dramatic 
imagery, 199 ; fluctuations in, 
397 ff. ; crises in religious develop- 
ment, 405. 

Environment : and suggestion, 
153-4; and freedom, 279; en- 
riched by attitude of subject, 
chapter I. 

Expectation: and illusion, 35, 40, 43, 
45 ; and force of character, 289. 

Expression, 30, 31. 

Fallacies : material, 131-7 ; formal, 
137-41 ; in inductive reasoning, 
142-3. 

Fatigue, 56, 57, 243, 397. 

Habit : as barrier to balanced apper- 
ception, 24 ; factor in illusion, 39 ; 
and emotion, 70-2 ; chapter XVII ; 
and character, 272, 276 ; plateaus 
in formation of, 393 ff. 

Hallucination, 41-3. 

Health : and memory, 174 ; and 
personality, 157. 

Hypothesis, chapter VI. 

Ideals : and imagination, 224-7 
and freedom, 287-8. 

Ideas : control of, 30 ; control of 
conduct through, chapter XI : 
motor character of, 145-50. 

Illusion : chapter III ; meaning 
34-7 ; causes, 37-41 ; frequency 
43. 

Imagery : relation of words to, 108- 
12 ; mental, chapter XIV ; tests 
for, 194 ff.; value of, 199 ff. ; 
cultivation of, 202 ff. 

Imagination : chapter XV ; inter- 
pretive, 217 ff. ; creative, 218 ff. 

Imitation, 150. 



429 



430 



Index 



Independence : as aim of life, chapter 
XXI; of fortune, 317 ff. ; of 
society, 322 ff. 

Individual differences : in will, 
275 ff . ; in adaptation to vocation, 
379 ff. ; in religion, 405. 

Instinct : and conservatism, 68 ; and 
involuntary attention, 236-8 ; and 
attention, 240 ; as source of habit, 
261-7 ; transitoriness of, 262 ff. 

Interest : personal as barrier to bal- 
anced apperception, 25 ; and tact, 
50 ff . ; and conservatism, 68 ff. ; 
in pedagogy, 52-3 ; and memory, 
174 ; as basis for choice of voca- 
tion, 385 ; religious, 404. 

Leadership : as aim of life, chapter 
XXII ; legitimacy of, 336 ; weak- 
ness of, 337 ff . 

Love : fluctuations in, 397 ff . 

Loyalty : and progress, 73 ; in work, 
336 ; and religion, 414 ; chapter 
XXV; defined, 364-6; and con- 
vention, 368 ff . 

Memory : influence of understanding 
upon, 59 ; effective use of, chapter 
XIII ; laws of retention in, 171-8 ; 
principles of recall in, 178-85 ; 
transformation of past, 187-8; 
imagery in, 190-1 ; and imagina- 
tion, 206-7 ; continuity of con- 
sciousness in, 230. 

Mill's Experimental Methods, 121-8. 

Misunderstandings : cause of, chap- 
ter II. 

Mnemonics, 179-82. 

Mood : influence of, 27-9 ; control of, 
29-32. 

Personality : the factors of, chapter 
XII. 

Plateaus : in development, chapter 
XXVII ; in habit formation, 
393 ff. ; in emotion, 396 ff . ; in 
moral development, 400 ff . 

Plato referred to, 7, 370. 

Pleasure : as end of life, 303 ff . ; 
value of, 303 ff. ; inadequacy of, as 
standard, 306 ff. 

Prayer, 411 ff. 



Preperception, 8-10, 229. 

Problems : general method of solv- 
ing, chapter VI. 

Progress : chapter V ; obstacles 
against, 62-72 ; as duty, 72-3 ; 
balance between progress and con- 
servatism, 74-5 ; character of 
progress in development, chapter 
XXVII ; and religion, 422. 

Reasoning : to causes, chapter IX ; 

pitfalls of, chapter X. 
Religion : and conversion, 403 ; of 

the strong man, chapter XXVIII; 

perverted, 409 ; and dogma, 

420 ff . ; and progress, 422 ff. ; and 

strength, 423 ff. 

Selfishness : chapter XX. 

Self-seeking, 293 ff. 

Social lion, chapter XIX. 

Stupidity, 58-60. 

Subjective contribution to meaning 
of world, 4-10. 

Suggestion : and conservatism, 63 ; 
and apperception, 19 ; defined 
151 ; influence of, 151-2 ; persist- 
ent, 152-3. 

Tact : chapter IV ; nature of, 48-9 ; 

interest as condition of, 50 ff. ; 

in religious thinking, 421. 
Teleology and will, 284-7. 
Transubstantiation as illustration of 

double apperception, 21 ff. 

Vocation : liberalized by loyalty, 
359-61 ; choice of, chapter XXVI ; 
misfits, 380 ff. ; talents for, 483. 

Will : and attention, 243 ff . ; abnor- 
mal forms of, 276-9 ; freedom of, 
279 ff. ; to be won, 289-91. 

Words : place in thinking, chapter 
VIII. 

Work : period, 56 ; planning day's 
work, 86 ; as source of strength, 
chapter XXIII ; as organizing 
principle, 343 ff . ; with definite 
purpose, 348-9 ; and drudgery, 
chapter XXIV ; and play, 353-6 ; 
all dignified, 374 ff. ; place of, in 
religion, 412 ; and faith, 414. 



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